THE  POLICY  AND  ADMINISTRATION 
OF  THE  DUTCH  IN  JAVA 


f^^y^' 


THE  POLICY  AND  ADMINISTRATION 


OF 


THE   DUTCH   IN  JAVA 


BY 


CLIVE    DAY,  Ph.D. 

ASSISTANT   PROFESSOR   OF   ECONOMIC   HISTORY 
IN   YALE   UNIVERSITY 


THE   MACMILLAN   COMPANY 

LONDON :  MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  Ltd. 
1904 

AU  rights  reservtd 


COPYEIGHT,    1904, 

By  the  MACMILLAN   COMPANY. 


Set  up,  electrotyped,  and  published  January,  1904. 


Nortoaoti  i^Ksa 

J.  S.  Gushing  &  Co.  —  Berwick  &  Smith  Co. 

Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


PREFACE 

When  I  was  first  drawn  into  a  study  of  some  of  the 
features  of  Dutch  policy  in  Java,  I  was  •  surprised  by 
the  wide  divergence  between  the  descriptions  of  this 
policy  current  in  English  and  the  facts  as  they  appear 
in  the  writings  of  Dutch  historians  and  in  the  original 
documents.  It  seemed  worth  the  while  to  carry  the 
study  farther  than  I  had  first  proposed,  and  the  results 
are  presented  here  with  the  hope  that  they  may  be  useful 
to  students  of  colonial  affairs.  My  aim  has  been  to  give 
in  a  volume  of  brief  compass  the  significant  results  of 
the  experiences  of  the  Dutch  in  their  most  important 
dependency.  For  lack  of  books  in  Dutch  constructed 
on  the  lines  which  I  wished  to  follow,  it  has  been  neces- 
sary in  many  places  to  renounce  the  guidance  of  previous 
writers,  and  I  can  hardly  have  avoided  errors  in  fact  or 
in  conclusion.  The  material  at  hand,  however,  seems 
full  enough  to  justify  this  course,  as  it  includes  most 
of  the  important  printed  sources  up  to  the  period  cov- 
ered by  the  last  three  chapters ;  these  last  chapters  have 
been  compiled  to  connect  the  past  of  Java  with  its 
present,  for  the  sake  of  students  of  modern  conditions. 
I  have  attempted  especially  to  make  the  most  of  the 
valuable  information  scattered  through  Dutch  periodical 
literature,  scanning  the  contents  of  the  individual  vol- 
umes of  all  the  important  periodicals,  without  reliance 
on   the   index    except  in  the    case  of   De    Gids.      Brief 


viii  PEEFACE 

bibliograpliical  notes  are  prefixed  to  some  of  the  chapters, 
and  the  references  in  the  text  are  designed  in  part  for 
the  benefit  of  students  who  are  not  conversant  with 
Dutch  literature  and  who  may  desire  to  extend  their 
study ;  the  "  Repertorium  "  of  Hooykaas  and  Hartmann 
should  be  mentioned  here  as  likely  to  be  of  aid  to  such 
students  in  further  work  in  the  periodicals. 

For  permission  to  use  parts  of  two  articles  on  the 
culture  system,  which  I  published  originally  in  the  Yale 
Review  in  1900,  I  am  indebted  to  colleagues  on  the 
editorial  board  of  that  journal. 


CLIVE  DAY. 


267  Lawkance  Hall, 
New  Haven,  Conn., 
October,  1903. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  I 

The  Native  Organization 

^"^Area  and  position  of  Java.     Its  importance  due  to  its  remarkable 

fertility 

.^..-'^he  Malay  population.     Importance  of  the  native  institutions  in  the 

development  of  Dutch  colonial  policy 
.^„^  Obstacles  to  an  accui'ate  knowledge  of  the  native  organization 

History  of  Java  before  the  arrival  of  the  Dutch.     Evidence  of  devel 
oped  forms  of  government 

Description  of  the  organization  of  the  state  of  Mataram 

Powers  of  the  provincial  governors,  or  regents  . 

Criticism  of  the  native  political  organization     . 

Bad  effects  of  personal  absolutism     .... 

Recurrent  wars  of  succession 

"Weakness  and  corruption  of  the  administration 

Inability  of  the  native  political  organization  to  maintain  peace 

Slight  positive  benefits  granted  by  the  government  to  the  people 

Burden  of  the  native  government 

Economic  organization  of  the  people  .... 

Preponderance  of  the  agricultural  class     .... 

In  some  parts  of  Java  villages  formed  of  individual  landholder 

Political  organization  and  independence  of  these  villages  . 

In  central  Java  villages  formed  of  dependent  tenants 

Burden  of  the  dues  demanded  from  the  tenants 

Their  political  dependence  on  their  landlords    . 

Unfavorable  condition  of  the  mass  of  the  people 

Likeness  of  the  native  organization  to  that  of  mediseval  Europe 

Opportunities  afforded  for  the  exercise  of  European  influence^ . 


3 
4 

7 
10 
13 
16 
16 
18 
20 
21 
24 
25 
26 
27 
28 
30 
31 
31 
33 
34 
35 
36 


CHAPTER   II 
The  East  India  Company:  Policy 


Early  commerce  of  the  Dutch  in  the  East.     Conditions  leading  to 

the  establishment  of  the  East  India  Company    ....       39 
-7^    Necessity  of  establishing  a  government  in  the  East  for  the  Com- 
pany's affairs 42 

ix 


CONTENTS 


Choice  of  a  site  in  Java  for  the  capital 

Inducements  to  territorial  expansion,  political  and  economic    . 
The  Company  led  to  this  expansion  against  the  desires  of  the  Direc 

tors 

Superiority  of  the  Dutch  in  diplomacy  and  war 

The  commercial  policy  of  the   Company ;    this  policy   based  on 

monopoly 

Monopoly  maintained  by  wars  with  European  competitors 
Attempts  at  breaches  in  the  monopoly  designed  to  attract  colonists 
Proposals  of  Governor  General  Coen ;  their  failure  . 
Failure  of  other  attempts  to  secure  commercial  privileges  for  indi 

viduals,  and  of  the  colonizing  schemes  connected  with  them 

rjApplication  of  mercantilist  notions 
Organization  and  character  of  the  Company's  commerce  . 
The  bulk  of  the  Company's  cargoes  received  in  the  form  of  tribute 
Contingents  and  forced  deliveries 


Description  of  the  contingent  system  by  a  Dutch  official  . 
Regulation  of  production  in  Java.     The  coffee  culture 

Regulation  of  sus:ar  manufacture 

The  Company's  finances  ;  difficulty  of  arriving  at  a  knowledge  of 

them 70 

I  The  Company  sustained  through  much  of  its  history  by  its  credit    .       71 

I  Causes  of  the  Company's  decline 72 

:  The  Company  prosperous  only  in  one  part  of  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury      74 

Decline  of  its  trade 74 

This  decline  due  mainly  to  the  competition  of  foreigners  ...      75 

Weakness  of  the  Company's  commercial  management      ...       77 

Growth  of  the  Company's  revenue  from  political  sources  ...       79 

'    Fall  of  the  Company  occasioned  by  European  wars  ....       80 

CHAPTER  III 

The  East  India  Company  :  Government 

The  Company  not  a  single  unified  corporation.     Powers  of  the  sepa- 
rate Chambers 82 

The  Committee  of  Seventeen,  designed  to  direct  the  general  policy  .  84 

Secrecy  and  corruption  of  the  Directors 85 

Freedom  of  the  Company's  directorate  from  any  control  ...  86 
Influence  of  the  directorate  on  the  course  of  policy  ;  maintenance  of 

monopoly,  character  of  the  colonial  administration    ...  88 

Independence  of  the  Indian  government  in  most  points    ...  89 


43 
44 

46 

48 

51 
52 
65 
56 

58 
60 
61 
62 
63 
65 
66 


CONTENTS 


in  its 


rela 


Organization  of  the  Indian  government.      Power  of  the  Governor 
General        

Criticism  of  the  organization  of  the  Indian  government 

Salaries  granted  Indian  officials         .... 

Character  of  the  Indian  officials         .... 

Mode  of  appointment  and  promotion.     Examples     . 

Corruption  among  the  Company's  officials 

Gains  of  the  officials  from  illicit  trade 

Peculation  by  officials 

i  Gains  by  officials  from  abuse  of  their  political  position 

Inefficiency  of  the  Company's  fiscal  administration  . 

Abuses  in  the  army 

The  Company  as  a  government  over  the  natives  ;  variety 
tions  with  them  ....... 

Government  through  protected  kings  or  regents 

1  Position  of  the  regents 

I  The  Dutch  residents  ;  difficulties  and  abuses  of  the  position 
ji  Evils  of  the  system  of  government  seen  in  the  workings  of  the 
4 ^tingent  system 

Economic  faults  of  the  contingent  system 

Attempts  to  reform  the  contingent  system 

Difficulty  of  any  reform  in  government     .... 

Small  contributions  to  civilization  of  the  natives  in  the  period 
: — '  Company's  rule 

Opposition  of  the  Company's  interests  as  trader  and  as  ruler 

"Benefit  to  the  natives  of  the  peace  maintained  by  the  Company 

Growth  of  the  native  population  in  the  eighteenth  century 


of  the 


91 

93 

95 

96 

97 

100 

102 

103 

104 

106 

107 

108 
109 
110 
112 

115 
117 
119 
119 

121 
122 
123 
125 


CHAPTER   IV 


Java  after  the  Fall  of  the  Company 


Abrupt  changes  in  the  colonial  history  of  Java  after  the  fall  of  the 

Company 127 

Principles  accepted  in  reorganizing  Java  under  the  Dutch  state        .  129 

Questions  of  reorganization  before  the  Dutch  government         .         .  130 

Contrast  between  commercial  and  political  systems           .         .         .  131 
The  political,  or  tax,  system  advocated  by  Dirk  van  Hogendorp  in 

1799 133 

Van  Hogendorp's  criticism  and  proposals 135 

Argument  from  conditions  in  districts  leased  to  Chinese   .         .         .  136 

Van  Hogendorp's  proposal  of  restricted  freedom  of  commerce          .  137 

Criticism  of  Van  Hogendorp's  proposals  by  Indian  officials       .         .  138 


CONTENTS 


Difficulty  of  administration  the  decisive  objection 

Appointment  of  a  commission  to  frame  a  system 

The  commission  opposed  to  Van  Hogendorp's  proposals  . 

Adherence  to  the  Company's  system  of  contingents  and  govern 

ment  through  native  rulers 

Report  in  favor  of  greater  freedom  of  trade       .... 
Beginning  of  a  new  period  in  government  under  the  charter  of  1803 
Application  of  changes  delayed  by  political  changes  in  Europe 
Independence  of  the  Indian  government  from  home  control 
Conditions  in  Java  at  the  arrival  of  Governor  General  Daendels 

Reforms  in  the  administration 

Abuses  and  reforms  in  the  judicial  organization 
The  former  system  of  native  government  maintained 
The  contingent  system  retained  and  extended  . 
Abuse  by  Daendels  of  the  forced  labor  of  the  natives 

Fiscal  difficulties  of  Daendels 

His  arbitrary  rule 


PAGE 

139 
140 
141 

143 
143 

144 
147 
148 
150 
151 
153 
154 
157 
159 
160 
162 


CHAPTER  V 

The  Pbkiod  of  Bkitish  Rule 

The  British  conquest  of  Java ;  weakness  of  the  Dutch     .        .        .  164 

Status  of  Java  under  British  rule 166 

Organization  of  the  British  colonial   government;    Raffles    made 

Lieutenant  Governor 167 

Career  and  abilities  of  Raffles 168 

Change  of  system  attempted  by  Raffles 170 

Motives  for  the  change 172 

Far-reaching  character  of  the  proposed  reforms         ....  173 

The  land-tax  the  central  feature 174 

Scheme  of  the  land-tax 175 

Question  of  the  form  of  tax  settlement 176 

Provisional  adoption  of  the  village  settlement 177 

Change  to  individual  settlement ;  reasons 178 

Novelty  of  Raffles's  plan  the  attempt  to  introduce  administration 

entirely  under  European  control 181 

Reasons  for  the  failure  of  Raffles's  land-tax.    Imperfections  in  the 

scheme 181 

Practical  difficulties  in  the  way  of  executing  such  a  plan  .         .        .  183 

Collapse  of  the  scheme  of  the  land-tax  in  application         .                 .  188 

Maintenance  of  some  of  the  forced  cultures 188 


CONTENTS  xiil 

PAOB 

Raffles's  commercial  policy 190 

Failure  of  Kaffles's  government  on  the  fiscal  side      ....  191 

Reform  attempted  in  the  administration 192 

The  residents 194 

Reform  in  the  judicial  organization 195 

Contrast  of  the  attempts  at  reform  in  the  European  and  in  the 

native  organization 196 

Failure  of  attempt  to  restrict  the  power  of  native  rulers   ,        .         .196 

Persistence  of  old  abuses 199 

CHAPTER  VI 

The  Period  of  the  Dutch  Restoration 

Inclination  of  the  Dutch  to  liberal  principles  on  the  reestablishment 

of  their  government 203 

Difficulties  of  the  Dutch  commissioners 205 

Question  of  retaining  the  land-tax.     Faults  in  its  operation      .         .  206 

Investigation  of  its  workings  and  decision  to  maintain  it  .         .         .  207 

Changes  in  the  land-tax.     («)  Village  settlement      .        .         .         .209 

(6)  Amount  set  by  bargaining  with  the  village  governments         .  211 

^Forced  cultures  retained  in  part 212 

iQuestion  of  the  regulations  to  be  adopted  for  the  cultures  formerly 

1        forced 214 

The  European  administration  strengthened  in  numbers    .         .        .  216 

Attempt  to  raise  the  quality  of  officials 216 

The  native  administration 218 

Attempts  to  reform  abuses  in  the  native  organization ;  cash  salaries, 
I       native  officials  forbidden  to  trade,  regulation  of  contracts  with 

I       natives 220 

tntimate  failure  of  these  attempts 221 

Transfer  of  the  government  from  the  commissioners  to  Baron  van 

der  Capellen 223 

.Continued  irregularities  in  the  workings  of  the  land-tax   .        .         .  224 
Reform  of  the  land-tax  prevented  by  the  introduction  of  the  culture 

system 226 

Failure  to  secure  freedom  in  the  coffee  culture          ....  227 
Necessity  of  active  internal  trade  for  the  success  of  the  free  coffee 

1       culture ;  need  of  European  settlers  to  this  end  ....  230 

lliberal  policy  of  the  Commissioners  to  European  settlers         .        .  232 

Reactionary  policy  of  Van  der  Capellen 233 

Law  of  1821  against  foreign  traders 234 

Law  of  1823  against  land  leases  to  foreigners 235 


CONTENTS 


Responsibility  of  Van  der  Capellen  for  the  introduction  of  the  cul- 
ture system 237 

Foreign  trade  and  commercial  policy.     Conditions  in  1816        .         .  237 

Attempt  to  protect  Dutch  commerce  by  differential  duties        ^        .  238 

Establishment  of  the  Dutch  Trading  Company  ....  240 


CHAPTER   VII 

The  Culture  System  :  Policy 

Unsettled  state  of  Dutch  policy  in  Java  about  1830  ....  243 

Reversion  to  the  policy  of  the  Company ;  fiscal  reasons    .        .         .  244 

Fiscal  demands  of  the  Netherlands 245 

Van  den  Bosch  the  chief  agent  in  the  change  of  policy     .        .         .  246 

His  criticism  of  the  existing  system 247 

Plan  proposed  by  Van  den  Bosch  ;  the  culture  system      .         .         .  249 

Undeserved  reputation  of  the  culture  system  in  later  literature         .  250 

Money's  book  on  Java ;  character  and  criticism        ....  251 

Influence  of  Money 263 

The  culture  system  purely  a  revenue  measure 256 

Changes  in  the  original  plan  due  to  the  desire  for  revenue        .         .  257 

Extent  to  which  the  culture  system  was  applied  ....  258 
Economic  criticism  of  the  plan  of  the  culture  system ;  inability  of  a 

government  to  organize  production 259 

Failures  in  the  attempts  to  introduce  new  cultures    ....  262 

Failures  in  established  cultures 263 

Inequality  in  the  burden  of  the  cultures 265 

Impropriety  of  judging  the  system  by  averages         ....  267 

Difficulty  of  securing  averages 268 

Hardships  imposed  on  the  natives  in  the  transportation  of  products  271 
Effect  of  forced  labor  and  monopoly  on  the  quantity  and  quality  of 

product 273 

Influence  of  the  culture  system  on  the  exclusion  of    European 

planters 274 

Reestablishment  of  commercial  monopoly 277 


CHAPTER  VIII 

The  Culture  System:  Government 

The  land-tax  during  the  period  of  the  culture  system        .        .        .280 
In  the  case  of  natives  subject  to  the  culture  system  the  tax  main- 
tained as  a  standard 280 


CONTENTS 


In  the  case  of  natives  free  from  the  culture  system  olcf  abuses  of  the 

tax  continued 281 

Growth  in  forced  services  besides  those  demanded  for  cultures         .  283 

Hardships  and  waste  of  the  system  of  forced  services        .        .        .  285 
Effect  of  the  culture  system  on  the  character  of  the  government ; 

difficulty  of  the  question 286 

Did  the  culture  system  cause  an  actual  decline  in  government  ?        .  287 

Was  the  culture  system  itself  responsible  for  the  evils  of  the  period  ?  287 
Influence  of  the  home  government  in  preventing  any  but  the  most 

necessary  expenditures        ........  288 

Slight  attention  paid  to  the  welfare  of  the  natives     ....  289 

Restriction  of  expenditures  on  the  political  administration        .         .  290 

Effect  on  the  spirit  of  the  European  officials 292 

Percentages  to  officials  on  the  returns  of  cultures      ....  293 

Ignorance  of  the  European  officials 294 

Partiality  in  appointments  and  promotions 295 

Abuse  of  the  natives  by  officials 296 

Increase  in  power  of  native  officials  .......  296 

Grants  to  regents  of  public  revenues  from  land  ;  bad  results     .        .  297 

Small  salaries  of  native  officials  and  resulting  abuses        .         .         .  299 

Tolerance  of  abuses  by  the  government 301 

The  village  government ;  its  importance 302 

Growth  of  communal  land  tenure  in  the  villages       ....  303 

Growth  in  power  and  decline  in  character  of  village  heads        .        .  304 

Abuses  of  the  village  governments 307 


CHAPTER  IX 


The  Culture  System:  Reform 


Government  revenues  from  the  culture  system  ....  309 
Criticism  of  the  attempt  to  defend  the  culture  system  by  the  asser- 
tion that  Java  became  more  prosperous  under  its  operation  .  310 
Significance  of  the  continued  growth  of  population  ....  312 
Migrations  and  famines  due  to  the  culture  system  ....  314 
Supreme  power  of  the  king  in  determining  colonial  policy  .  .  316 
The  Dutch  ignorant  of  the  state  of  affairs  in  Java     .         .         .         .317 

Strictness  of  press  regulations 319 

Small  power  of  the  Dutch  Chambers  in  colonial  affairs  before  1848  320 
Slight  practical  results  in  the  colonial  field  of  the  constitutional 

revision  of  1848 323 

Beginnings  of  the  reform  movement  after  1848.     Van  Hogvell  326 


xvi  CONTENTS 

^  PAGE 

Establishment  of  the  colonial  constitution,  1854        ....  327 

Ambiguity  of  the  colonial  constitution  regarding  the  culture  system  328 

Influence  of  Dekker's  "Max  Havelaar"  in  stimulating  reform        .  330 

History  of  the  reform  movement  in  the  Chambers    ....  333 
Victory  of  liberal  principles  under  the  colonial  minister,  Van  der 

Putte 334 

;       Final  victory  of  the  reformers  about  1870 335 

/        Practical  reforms  in  Java  during  this  period 335 

/        Parallels  to  the  culture  system  in  the  Philippines  and  in  British 

j                India 336 

\       Criticism  of  attempt  to  defend  the  culture  system     ....  338 


CHAPTER  X 

Recent  Economic  Policy 

Economic  difficulty  in  tropical  colonization  the  smallness  of  the 

wants  of  the  natives 346 

Underestimate  of  the  future  by  the  natives 348 

Credit  bondage :  exchange  of  future  labor  for  present  goods     .         .  348 
Credit  bondage  a  native  institution  in  Java,  and  used  by  the  Dutch 

to  solve  the  labor  problem 350 

Effect  of  the  culture  system  on  native  labor 352 

Continuance  of  the  practice  of  securing  laborers  by  political  pressure  354 

DiflBculties  encountered  with  free  labor 355 

Difficulty  in  engaging  laborers  ;  necessity  of  advances      .        .        .  356 

Regulation  of  labor  contracts  by  the  government       ....  357 

Difficulty  in  holding  laborers  to  their  engagements  ....  358 

Punishment  of  breach  of  contract 358 

Small  amount  of  exports  produced  entirely  by  natives      .        .        .  360 

Importance  of  the  Chinese  in  the  industrial  organization  .        .        .  360 

Their  functions  as  middlemen 362 

Necessary  unpopularity  of  the  Chinese 364 

The  land  problem 366 

Danger  of  allowing  the  right  of  sale  without  restriction ;  example, 

the  "  particular  "  lands 367 

Principle  that  the  state  is  sole  proprietor  of  the  land        .        .        .  369 

Prohibition  of  sales  to  foreigners 372 

Lease  of  cultivated  lands  permitted  under  restriction        .        .        .  374 

Exceptional  arrangements  in  the  Principalities  ....  376 

More  liberal  regulations  on  the  lease  of  uncultivated  land        .         .  378 

Economic  progress  of  Java  under  the  modern  system        .        .        .  379 


CONTENTS 


xvu 


CHAPTER  XI 


Recent  Fiscal  Policy 

Relation  of  the  finances  of  Java  and  of  the  Netherlands    . 

Continuance  of  the  "  net-profit "  system 

Decline  of  the  question  in  practical  importance 

Development  of  Dutch  policy  as  shown  in  expenditures  in  Java 

Comparison  of  the  budgets  of  1870  and  1900     .... 

Expenditures  on  education 

Abolition  of  the  government  sugar  culture        .... 
Restriction  of  the  government  coffee  culture     .... 
Place  of  labor  services,  in  lieu  of  taxes,  in  the  native  organization 
Attempts  to  reform  the  abuses  of  these  services 
Progress  in  reform  since  1890     . 
Development  of  taxes  in  the  recent  period 

The  land-tax 

System  of  higgling,  or  "  admodatie  stelsel  " 
Failure  of  the  reform  measure  of  1872 
Practical  reform  in  the  administration  of  the  tax 
Beginning  of  systematic  regulation    . 


PAGE 

382 

383 
384 
386 
386 
389 
392 
394 
397 
400 
401 
402 
404 
405 
406 
408 
408 


CHAPTER  XII 


The  Modern  Government  and  Provincial  Administration 


The  government  at  The  Hague 

The  minister  of  the  colonies 

Proposal  of  a  colonial  council 

Powers  of  the  Dutch  legislature  in  colonial  affairs     . 

Criticism  of  the  part  played  by  the  legislature  . 

The  government  in  India  ;  its  centralization 

Dependence  of  the  Governor  General  on  authorities  at  home 

Power  of  the  Governor  General  in  India ;  the  Council  of  India 

departments  of  administration,  the  General  Secretariat 
The  provincial  administration  ;  peculiarity  of  its  position 
Scheme  of  the  provincial  administration    . 
The  resident  and  his  assistants  ..... 

The  controleur  ........ 

Native  officials ;  the  regents  and  district  heads 
Centralization  and  its  bad  effects       .... 


the 


409 
410 
411 
411 
412 
414 
414 

416 
417 
418 
418 
419 
420 
421 


CONTENTS 


Proposals  for  the  reorganization  of  the  central  government 
Proposals  for  the  establishment  of  representative  provincial  govern- 
ments   

Faults  of  European  officials  in  the  provincial  administration 

Character  of  the  native  officials 

Relations  between  European  and  native  officials 

Salaries  of  European  officials  in  the  provincial  administration 

Slowness  of  promotion  in  the  provincial  administration    . 


PAOK 

422 

423 
424 
425 
426 
428 
430 


Index 


433 


FULL   TITLES    OF   WORKS   CITED    MOST 
FREQUENTLY   BY   ABBREVIATIONS 

FEBIODICALS 

Bijdragen  tot  de  Taal-  Land-  ea  Volkenkunde  van  Neerlandsch  Indie. 
Tijdschrift  van  het  Koninklijk  Instituut.  's  Gravenhage,  1853 ff. 
Cited  as  Bijd.  TLV.,  by  year,  series  (volgreeks),  and  volume. 

Economist,  De.  Amsterdam,  1852  ff.  Cited  by  year  and  part ;  there 
have  been  generally  two  parts  a  year  since  1868,  but  the  paging  is 
continuous. 

Gids,  De.  Amsterdam,  1837  ft'.  Cited  by  year  and  part;  there  have 
been  four  parts  a  year  since  1868,  separately  paged. 

Indische  Gids,  De.  Amsterdam,  1879  ff.  Cited  by  year  and  part ;  there 
are  two  parts  a  year,  but  since  1885  the  paging  has  been  continuoiis. 

Mededeelingen  van  vfege  het  Nederlandsche  Zendelinggenootschap.  Rot- 
terdam, 1867  ff.     Cited  by  year  and  volume. 

Tijdschrift  voor  Indische  Taal-  Land-  en  Volkenkunde.  Bataviaasch 
Genootschap  van  Kunsten  en  "Wetenschappen.  Batavia,  1853  ff. 
Cited  as  Tijd.  TLV.,  by  year  and  volume. 

Tijdschrift  voor  Nederlandsch  Indie.  Zalt-Bommel,  1838  ff.  Cited  as 
TNI.,  by  year,  volume  and  part.  There  has  been  a  bewildering  suc- 
cession of  series,  and  I  have  disregarded  them. 

Verhandelingen  van  het  Bataviaasch  Genootschap  van  Kunsten  en  "Weten- 
schappen. Rotterdam,  Amsterdam,  Batavia,  1779  ff.  Cited  by  year, 
volume,  also  by  part  when  the  volume  was  divided ;  I  have  covered 
the  series  from  1842  to  1897. 

BOOKS 

Boys,  Henry  Scott.     Some  Notes  on  Java  and  its  Administration  by  the 

Dutch.     Allahabad,  1892. 
Bruce,  John.     Annals  of  the  Honorable  East  India  Company.     London, 

1810,  3  vols. 
Chailley-Bert,  Joseph.     Java  et  ses  Habitants.     Paris,  1900. 
Chijs,  J,  A.  van  der.     Nederlandsch-Indisch  Plakaatboek.     Batavia  and 

's  Hage,  1885  ff.,  16  vols. 

xix 


XX  WORKS  CITED 

Coen,  see  Koen. 

Crawfurd,  John.     History  of  the  Indian  Archipelago.     Edinburgh,  1820, 

3  vols. 
Daendels,  Herman  Willem.    Staat  der  Nederlandsche  Oostindische  Bezit- 

tingen,  1808-1811.     's  Gravenhage,  1814,  4  vols. 
[Dekker,  Edouard  Douwes.]     Max  Havelaar,  of  de  KoflBjveilingen  der 

Nederlandsche  Handelmaatschappy,  door  Multatuli.     9.  druk,  Am- 
sterdam, 1900. 
Deventer,  M.  L.  van.     Geschiedenis  der  Nederlanders  op  Java.     Haarlem, 

n.  d.  [1887-1895],  2  vols. 
Deventer,  M.  L.  van,  editor.     Het  Nederlandsch  Gezag  over  Java  en 

Onderhoorigheden  sedert  1811.     's  Gravenhage,  1891. 
Deventer,  S.  van,  editor.     Bijdragen  tot  de  Kennis  van  het  Landelijk 

Stelsel  of  Java.     Zalt-Bommel,  1865-1866,  3  vols. 
Eindresum6  van  het  bij  Gouvernements-besluit  .  .  .  bevolen  Onderzoek 

naar  de  Eechten  van  den  Inlander  op  den  Grond  op  Java  en  Madoera. 

Batavia,  1870-1896,  3  vols. 
Elout  [Cornells  Theodoras].     Bijdragen.  .  .     's  Gravenhage,  1851,  1861, 

1874,  3  vols. 
Encyclopaedie  van  Nederlandsch-Indie,  edited  by  P.  A.   van    der   Litli 

and  others,     's  Gravenhage,  n.  d.     The  fourth  and  last  volume  is  in 

course  of  publication. 
Hogendoi-p,  Dirk  van.     Nadere  Uitlegging  en  Ontwikkeling  van  het  Stel- 
sel.    's  Hage,  1802. 
Jaarcijfers  voor  het  Koninkrijk  der  Nederlanden,  Kolonign,   1897.     's 

Gravenhage,  1899. 
Jenks,   Jeremiah   W.     Report  on   Certain  Economic   Questions  in  the 

English  and  Dutch  Colonies  in  the  Orient.     Washington,  1902. 
Jonge,  J.  K.  J.  de,  editor.     De  Opkomst  van  het  Nederlandsch  Gezag  in 

Oost-Indie.     [In  vol.  4  ff.  the  title  is  changed  to  read  Gezag  over 

Java.     Vols.  11-13  were  edited  by  M.  L.  van  Deventer.]     's  Graven- 
hage and  Amsterdam,  1862-1888,  13  vols. 
Kleyn,  R.  H.     Het  Gewestelijk  Bestuur  op  Java.     Leiden,  1889. 
Koen,  J.  P.     Stukken  betrekkelijk  den  Handel  enz.  in  Indig,  1622-1623. 

In  Kronijk  van  het  Historisch  Genootschap  te  Utrecht,  1853,  2.  ser. , 

9.  jaargang,  58-150. 
Louter,  J.  de.     Handleiding  tot  de  Kennis  van  het  Staats-  en  Adminis- 

tratief  Recht  van  Nederlandsch-Indig.     4.  uitgave,  's  Gravenhage, 

1895. 
Meinsma,  J.  J.     Geschiedenis  van  de  Nederlandsche  Oost-Indische  Bezit- 

tingen.     Delft  and  's  Hage,  1872-1875,  3  vols. 
Mijer,  P.    Verzameling  van  Instructien,  Ordonnancien  en  Reglementen. 

Batavia,  1848. 


WORKS  CITED  xxi 

Mill,  James.     The  History  of  British  India.     4th  ed.,  London,  1840, 

6  vols. 
Money,  J.  W.  B.     Java ;  or  How  to  manage  a  Colony.    London,  1861,  2 

vols. 
Multatuli,  see  Dekker. 
Norman,  H.  D.  Levyssohn.     De  Britische  Heerschappij  over  Java  en 

Onderhoorigheden  (1811-1816).     's  Gravenhage,  1857. 
[Piccardt,  R.  A.  S.]     De  Geschiedenis  van  het  Cultuurstelsel  in  Neder- 

landsch-Iudie.     Uitgegeven  door  de   Maatschappij  Tot  Nut  van  't 

Algemeen.     Amsterdam,  1873. 
Pierson,  N.  G.     Koloniale  Politiek.     Amsterdam,  1877. 
[Raffles,  Sophia.]     Memoir  of  the  Life  and  Public  Services  of  Sir  Thomas 

Stamford  Raffles ;  by  his  Widow.     London,  1830. 
Raffles,  Sir  Thomas  Stamford.     The  Histoiy  of  Java.     2d  ed.,  London, 

1830,  2  vols. 
Raffles,  Thomas  Stamford.     Substance  of  a  Minute  recorded  .  .  .  1814. 

London,  1814. 
Rees,  O.  van.     Geschiedenis  der  Staathuishoudkunde  in  Nederland.     2. 

deel,  Geschiedenis  der  koloniale  Politiek.     Utrecht,  1868. 
Regeeringsalmanak  voor  Nederlandsch-Indie,  1899.     Batavia,  n.  d.      All 

references  are  to  the  first  volume. 
Reus,  G.  C.  Klerk  de.     Geschichtlicher  Ueberblick  der  administrativen, 

rechtlichen  und  finanziellen  Entwicklung  der  Niederlandisch-Ostin- 

dischen   Compagnie.    Verhandelingen   v.    h.    Batav.      Genootschap, 

1894,  47 : 3  : 1-323. 
Bitter,  P.  H.,  editor.     Eene  Halve  Eeuw.     Amsterdam,  1898,  2  vols. 
Sillem,  J.  A.     Dirk  van  Hogendorp  (1761-1822).     Amsterdam,  1890. 
Soest,  G.  H.  van.    Geschiedenis  van  het  Kultuurstelsel.    Rotterdam,  1869- 

1871,  3  vols. 
Veth,  P.  J.     Java,  geographisch,  ethnologisch,  historisch.     2.  druk,  be- 

werkt  door  J.  F.  Snellman  en  J.  F.  Niermeyer.     Haarlem,  1896  ff. 

The  third  volume  is  in  course  of  publication. 
Waal,   E.    de.     Nederlandsch   Indie  in  de   Staten-Generaal    sedert    de 

Grondwet  van  1814.     's  Gravenhage,  1860-1861,  3  vols. 
Wallace,  Alfred  Russel.     The  Malay  Archipelago.     New  York,  1869. 
Woordenboek  van  Nederlandsch   Indie,  aardrijkskundig  en  statistisch. 

Amsterdam,  1869,  3  vols. 


POLICY  AND   ADMINISTRATION   OF 
THE   DUTCH   IN   JAVA 

CHAPTER  I 

THE  NATIVE   OEGANIZATION 

[Note.  —  I  have  embodied  in  the  text  of  this  chapter  the  necessary 
couiment  on  the  sources  of  information,  and  refer  to  the  footnotes  for 
detailed  indication  of  the  available  material.  The  standard  history  of 
native  Java  is  by  Veth,  forming  the  first  two  volumes  of  his  work  on 
Java  now  appearing  in  a  revised  form.  Earlier  histories  lack  critical 
discrimination  ;  the  works  of  Raffles  and  Crawfurd,  however,  are  still  of 
value  for  the  description  of  institutions  at  their  time.  Scheuer,  "  Het 
Grondbezit  in  de  Germaansche  Mark  en  de  Javaansche  Dessa,  Rotterdam, 
1885,"  is  largely  historical,  but  suffers  from  its  bias  toward  the  old  theory 
of  the  Aryan  village  community ;  it  is  based  on  material  which  I  have 
/\' used  independently.] 

f      TAVA  is  the  second  in  the  chain  of  large  islands  that 
/      ^     stretch  out  from  the  Malay  peninsula  toward  Aus- 
tralia.    In  its  greatest  extent  its  length  is  ever  one  thou- 
sand kilometres,  a  distance  nearly  equal  to  that  from  New 
York  to  Louisville  or  Charleston,  or,  in  the  Old  World, 
1      from  Paris  to  Vienna.     The  breadth  of  the  island,  how- 
ever, is  in  no  place  over  one-fifth  of  the  length,  so  that  the 
total  area  (including  some  small  neighboring  islands)  is 
:    only  about  fifty  thousand  square  miles,  almost  exactly  the 
same  as  that  of  England,  or  a  little  more  than  that  of  the 
State  of  New  York.     Java  is  much  smaller  than   some 
others  of  the  Dutch  East  India  islands,  and  makes  but  one- 

B  1 


2  THE  DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

fourteenth  of  their  total  area,  but  it  is  now,  and  has  been 
throughout  most  of  the  period  of  European  colonial  enter- 
prise, the  first  of  them  in  economic  and  political  impor- 
tance. /  At  the  present  time  it  has  a  population  about 
threefold  that  of  all  the  other  islands,  and  provides  about 
five-sixths  of  the  total  revenues  received  by  the  colonial 
government. 

The  superiority  in  wealth  and  population  that  Java  pos- 
sesses over  the  other  territories  of  the  Dutch  in  the  East 
Indies  can  be  ascribed  in  large  part  to  the  remarkable  fer- 
tility of  the  island,  due  to  its  geological  constitution.  It 
is  said  to  contain  more  volcanoes,  active  and  extinct,  than 
any  other  known  district  of  equal  extent ;  the  substances 
thrown  out  from  these  volcanoes  are  spread  over  the  whole 
island,  obscuring  in  most  places  the  original  rocks,  and 
forming  a  soil  of  exceptional  productiveness.  The  climate 
is  favorable.  There  is  scarcely  any  variation  in  the  mean 
temperature  from  month  to  month,  and  the  rainfall  is 
heavy  and  sure.  Records  of  recent  years  show  occasional 
droughts  in  different  parts  of  the  island,  and  more  fre- 
quent inundations,  but  Java  fares  better  in  this  respect 
than  most  other  parts  of  the  tropical  world,  certainly  far 
better  than  British  India.  The  combination  of  soil  and 
climate  has  gained  for  the  island  the  title  of  "  thegarden 
of  the  East,"  and  has  made  its  vegetation  the  type  of 
tropical  luxuriance.  Much  of  the  surface  is  covered  by 
mountains,  and  even  now  only  about  four-tenths  of  it  is 
under  cultivation,  but  that  area  maintains  on  a  low  grade 
of  the  agricultural  stage  a  population  little  less  than  the 
population  of  modern  industrial  England. 

In  this  introductory  sketch  of  the  scene  of  Dutch  colo- 
nial enterprise,  more  importance  attaches  to  the  people 


1  THE  NATIVE  ORGANIZATION  S 

•whom  the  Dutch  found  there  than  to  the  place  itself. ' 
The  natives  belong  to  the  Malay  stock,  which  has  spread 
from  southeastern  Asia  over  a  great  part  of  the  islands  in 
the  Pacific  Ocean.  Physically  they  are  of  low  stature  and 
of  delicate  build,  no  match  for  the  average  European. 
Their  intellectual  and  moral  characteristics  will  appear 
in  the  following  description  of  their  organization,  as  it 
existed  at  the  time  when  the  Dutch  came  in  contact  with 
them. 

The  writer  is  convinced  that  the  native  organization  is 
the  most  important  topic  to  be  treated  in  describing  the 
course  of  the  Dutch  in  Java.  It  is  the  key  of  their  his- 
tory. The  Dutch  have  been  at  all  times  few  in  proportion 
to  the  mass  of  natives.  Java  ha_s^  been.jto  them_not  a 
"colony,"  but  a  "possession  "or  "dependency  J'  They 
have  kept  their  place  in  the  island  not  by  driving  the 
natives  out,  but  by  learning  to  work  with  them  and  to 
rule  over  them.  Up  to  the  most  recent  times  they  have 
not  entered  into  relations  with  the  mass  of  the  common 
people.  One  man  cannot  know  or  govern  tens  or  hun- 
dreds of  thousands.  They  have  had  to  work  and  rule 
through  native  chiefs,  and  through  the  customs  of  gov- 
ernment which  those  chiefs  represent.  The  Dutch  have 
succeeded  in  their  colonial  policy  only  by  learning  to 
understand  and  to  use  the  native  institutions ;  ignorance 
or  misuse  of  tlie  opportunities  for  control  which  the  native 
organization  affords  has  been  one  of  the  chief  causes  of 
their  failures. 

The  course  of  Dutch  policy  is  a  history  of  the  gradual 
recognition  of  this  fact.  In  the  earliest  period  the  East 
India  Company  attached  itself  as  a  parasite  to  Javanese 
society,  with  little  knowledge  of  its  organization  and  little 


4  *  THE  DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

regard  to  the  effects.  The  failure  of  the  company  brought 
the  Indian  possessions  under  the  direct  control  of  the  state. 
A  beginning  was  made  in  the  study  of  the  native  institu- 
tions, but  the  knowledge  of  them  was  still  only  super- 
ficial, and  in  the  period  of  the  culture  system  they  were 
so  misused  as  to  threaten  the  prosperity  of  the  people  and 
the  integrity  of  the  government.  Finally,  in  the  modern 
period  of  reform,  beginning  about  fifty  years  ago,  the 
s_elfish  pressure  on  native  institutions  was  relaxed.  The 
;  Dutch  perceived  at  last  that  native  customs  are  a  more 
'  important  factor  in  the  economic  and  political  organization 
than  any  of  their  own  laws  and  regulations^  Their  his- 
tory in  recent  years  has  been  marked  by  careful  study  of 
native  institutions,  and  by  the  constant  effort  to  shape 
their  policy  to  them. 

In  view  of  the  importance  of  this  topic  of  the  native 
institutions  in  Java,  it  is  proper  here  to  make  the  admis- 
sion that  the  subject  offers  unusual  difiiculties  to  the  stu- 
dent, and  that  any  treatment  of  it  must  be  general  in 
terms  and  hazy  in  details.  We  should  like  to  know  what 
the  organization  was  before  the  Dutch  appeared,  and  what 
the  successive  changes  have  been  since  then  under  Dutch 
influence.  Unfortunately  it  was  not  till  about  the  be- 
ginning of  the  nineteenth  century  that  the  subject  at- 
tracted the  serious  attention  of  European  administrators, 
and  in  some  important  points  the  subject  was  not  thor- 
oughly studied  by  them  until  after  the  middle  of  the  cen- 
tury. Thus,  in  regard  to  land  tenure,  one  of  the  most 
important  topics  of  all,  the  student  is  obliged  to  rely  in 
large  part  on  the  results  of  a  government  investigation 
which  was  not  begun  till  1867.  The  testimony  embodied 
in  the  report  of  the  investigation  shows  that  at  that  time 


I  THE  NATIVE   ORGANIZATION  5 

the  Dutch  had  not  only  completely  changed  the  superstruc- 
tion  of  native  government,  but  had,  profoundly  modified 
its  substructure  as  well,  and  that  the  village  organization 
of  to-day  cannot  be  taken  as  evidence  of  what  existed  one 
hundred  or  even  fifty  years  ago.  Even  at  the  end  of  the 
eighteenth  century  some  of  the  native  institutions  had 
become  seriously  distorted  by  the  pressure  which  they 
suffered  under  the  East  India  Company.  The  evidence 
from  a  late  period  must  evidently  be  used  with  caution. 

On  the  other  hand  we  get  from  native  traditions  a  great 
amount  of  material,  but  literary  rather  than  critical  in 
character,  and  more  dangerous  than  useful  in  the  hands 
of  any  one  not  specially  trained  to  its  interpretation.  It 
would  be  ungrateful  not  to  recognize  the  service  that 
Dutch  scholars  have  done  in  the  last  hundred  years  in 
their  work  on  this  material,  and  yet  one  cannot  repress 
the  regret  that  no  scholar  (so  far  as  I  know  the  literature) 
has  approached  it  from  the  special  standpoint  of  compara- 
tive politics,  and  has  reconstructed  from  it  and  from  the 
evidence  of  early  Dutch  observers,  a  complete  picture  of 
the  primitive  political  constitution.  One  finds  plenty  of 
dynastic  narratives  of  the  native  states,  with  an  account 
of  their  various  wars  and  intrigues,  but  generalizations  on 
the  real  significance  of  it  all  occur  only  as  obiter  dicta. 
The  importance  of  native  institutions  in  shaping  the  colo- 
nial policy  of  the  Dutch  has  been  fully  recognized  by  one 
of  the  foremost  Dutch  authorities,^  but,  in  spite  of  the 
work  that  he  and  others  have  accomplished  on  the  line 
that  he  suggested,  an  immense  amount  is  still  left  to  be 
done.     The  narrative  history  of  the  native  states  has  been 

1  P.  J.  Veth,  "  Gedachten  over  de  behandeling  der  geschiedenis  van 
Ned.  Ind.,"  TNI,  1867,  1 :  2:  323. 


6  THE  DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

put  in  shape  for  use,  but  scholars  have  scarcely  more  than 
begun  to  study  the  native  constitutional  history  or  to 
explain  the  native  institutions  in  the  modern  terms  of 
social  and  political  science. ^ 

In  view  of  the  difficulties  of  the  subject,  it  is  fortunate 
that  the  purpose  of  this  book  requires  no  more  than  a 
sketch  of  the  main  features  of  the  organization  with  which 
the  Dutch  had  to  do.  Such  a  sketch,  tentative  in  many 
points,  disregarding  many  differences  in  time  and  place, 
is  presented  in  the  following  pages,  with  the  conviction 
that  the  general  impression  will  strike  not  far  from  the 
truth,  whatever  liberties  may  seem  to  have  been  taken  in 
the  treatment  of  material.  One  further  bit  of  preface 
may  be  proper,  to  disarm  the  suspicions  of  readers  who 
may  find  the  picture  of  Malay  politics  unexpectedly  black. 
This  study  is  meant  to  be  critical,  but  the  writer  is  con- 
scious of  no  animus  to  influence  his  judgment  in  this  or 
other  parts  of  the  work,  and  seeks  only  to  convey  to  the 
reader  as  accurately  and  soberly  as  may  be  the  results  of 
his  studies.  If  the  native  political  organization  is  de- 
scribed as  being  so  very  bad,  it  is  because  it  cannot  be 
made  to  appear  better  without  departing  from  the  truth 
as  shown  in  historical  documents.  The  faults  of  govern- 
ment, it  is  true,  are  more  likely  to  go  on  record  than  its 
merits ;  the  reader  may  make  what  allowance  he  chooses 
for  this  fact,  and  may  assume  that  a  fuller  record  would 
lead  to  a  more  favorable  judgment.  The  writer  thinks 
this  might  be  the  case  as  regards  the  sparsely  populated 

1  The  change  of  tendencies  in  the  Netherlands  is  shown  by  the  publica- 
tion in  Bijd.  TLV.,  1901,  of  a  valuable  study  on  the  native  village  organi- 
zation by  Professor  L.  W.  C.  van  den  Berg.  I  shall  have  occasion  to  refer 
to  this  later. 


I  THE   NATIVE   OKGANIZATION  7 

parts  of  Java ;  as  regards  the  government  of  the  mass  of 
the  people  he  doubts  it. 

As  an  introduction  to  this  sketch  of  the  native  political 
institutions  in  the  period  of  the  Dutch  East  India  Com-M 
pany  a  very  brief  summary  of  the  early  history  will 
suffice.  Linguistic  evidence  shows  that  before  the  begin- 
ning of  the  Christian  era  the  Malay  inhabitants  of  Java 
cultivated  rice  on  terraced  and  irrigated  fields,  worked 
iron  and  other  metals,  and  had  a  considerable  knowledge 
of  navigation.  In  the  first  century  A.D.  occurred  the 
invasion  from  continental  India  that  forms  the  commence- 
ment of  the  Hindu  period  in  Javanese  history.  This  period 
lasts  until  about  the  beginning  of  the  fifteenth  century. 
Authorities  differ  in  their  estimates  of  the  influence  that 
the  invading  Hindus  exercised  over  the  Malays,  and  it 
may  be,  as  some  suggest,  that  the  Hindus  continued  and 
developed  the  Malay  organization  rather  than  that  they 
changed  it  in  its  essentials. i  Whatever  the  judgment  on 
this  point  may  be,  and  however  few  original  contributions 
may  be  ascribed  to  the  Hindus,  it  is  certain  that  the  east- 
ern and  central  parts  of  Java,  in  which  the  Hindu  monu- 
ments are  mainly  found,  have  nowadays  a  population 
differing  radically  in  character,  customs,  and  language 
from  the  inhabitants  of  the  western  end  of  the  island. ^ 

iBrandes,  "Een  jayapattra,"  Tijd.  TLV.,  1889,  32 :  122.  He  thinks 
that  the  Malays  pursued  their  development  independent  of  Hindu  influ- 
ence till  the  eighth  century,  and  that  they  had  then  achieved  important 
advances  along  a  number  of  different  lines,  including  a  system  of  coinage 
and  a  well-established  government.  Van  Eck  asserts  that  Hinduism  was 
only  a  cloak  over  the  Malay,  obscuring  but  not  eradicating  his  original 
traits;  the  Javanese  was  only  "a  disguised  Polynesian"  in  respect  to 
Hindu  influence.  "  Schetsen,"  XII,  Ind.  Gids,  1882,  1:624.  Professor 
L.  W.  C.  van  den  Berg  is  a  believer  in  Aryan  influence. 

2  The  character  and  causes  of  the   difference  are  discussed  by  Van 


8  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

The  main  point  of  contrast  that  interests  us  here  is  that 
of  political  character  and  institutions.  The  Soendanese 
of  western  Java  show  far  more  personal  independence 
than  the  Javanese  proper  to  tlie  east  of  them,  whose 
meekness  under  political  control  amounts  to  servility,  and 
whose  rights  in  such  an  important  matter  as  land  tenure 
are  so  small  as  to  put  their  possessions  entirely,  at  the 
mercy  of  their  rulers.  The  character  and  institutions  of 
the  Javanese  proper  can  be  explained  only  by  the  assump- 
tion that  the  people  had  been  subjected  for  many  centuries 
to  a  government  developed  far  beyond  the  stage  of  the 
old  tribal  system. 

The  indication  here  given  that  a  settled  and  advanced 
form  of  government  existed  in  the  Hindu  period  is  con- 
firmed by  all  the  contemporary  historical  evidence. 
Marco  Polo  and  Friar  Odoric  speak  of  the  government  of 
Java  as  a  monarchy,  and  reaching  far  back  beyond  their 
time  Chinese  accounts  give  the  same  impression.  One  of 
these  of  the  period  of  the  T'ang  dynasty  (618-906) 
speaks  of  a  king  of  Java,  whose  supremacy  was  recognized 
by  twenty-eight  small  countries  lying  about  his  capital ; 
an  account  from  the  period  of  the  Sung  dynasty  (960- 
1279)  describes  a  state  which  maintained  an  army  of 
thirty  thousand  men  and  had  a  highly  organized  adminis- 
tration, with  more  than  a  thousand  officials  employed  in 
the  different  departments.    Testimony  from  native  sources 

Hoevell,  "  Onderzoek  naar  de  oorzaken  van  het  onderscheid  .  .  .  tuss- 
chen  de  Soendaneezen  en  eigenlijke  Javanen,"  TNI.,  1841,  4:2:  132  ff. 
He  thinks  that  the  difference  originated  in  Hindu  times  and  has  developed 
since.  The  boundary  line  betvpeen  the  Javanese  proper  and  the  Soen- 
danese is  found  in  the  residencies  of  Tagal  and  Banjoemas.  Dekker, 
"Max  Havelaar,"  190,  said  that  the  two  peoples  are  no  more  alike  than 
modern  Englishmen  and  Dutchmen  ;  the  comparison  may  serve  as  some 
measure  of  the  difference,  though  it  obscures  the  peculiar  quality  of  it. 


1  THE   NATIVE   ORGANIZATION  9 

is  all  to  the  same  effect.  If  all  other  evidence  were  lack- 
ing, it  would  be  possible  to  conclude  from  the  great 
temples  of  the  Hindu  period,  like  Boro-Boedoer,  that  the 
mass  of  the  people  had  already  learned  to  submit  to  the 
control  coming  from  some  single  source  of  authority. 
Native  inscriptions  do  exist,  however,  generally  in  the 
form  of  a  grant  by  the  prince  to  some  individual  of  land, 
office,  or  special  privileges  ;  these  documents  show  that  in 
the  Hindu  period  in  Java  the  central  government  had  at 
least  as  much  power  as  it  had  in  mediaeval  Europe. ^ 

In  the  latter  part  of  the  fourteenth  century  the  Hindu 
empire  of  Madjapahit  extended  not  only  over  Java  proper 
but  over  Soenda  as  well,  and  exercised  some  kind  of  over- 
lordship  over  parts  of  Malakka,  Sumatra,  Borneo,  and 
other  islands  in  the  archipelago. ^  Under  internal  dissen- 
sion and  with  the  extension  of  Mohammedanism  in  the 
fifteenth  century  this  empire  crumbled.  Islam  vanquished 
the  Indian  religions  and  became  in  time  practically  the 
exclusive  faith  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  island.  In  its 
progress  through  Java  it  broke  up  the  old  states  into  new 
ones,  but  there  is  no  evidence  that  it  changed  the  charac- 
ter of  the  political  organization,  or  added  anything  essential 

1  Of  especial  interest  to  any  student  of  institutions  is  a  Javanese  grant 
of  immunity  of  860  a.d.,  mucla  lilve  contemporary  grants  in  Europe.  This 
is  translated  and  discussed  by  Kern,  "Over  eene  oudjavaansche  oorkonde," 
Verslagen  en  Mededeelingen  der  Koninkl.  Akad.  v.  "Wetenschappen. 
Afd.  Letterkunde,  Amsterdam,  1881,  2.  Reeks,  10  :  77  ft.  For  a  discus- 
sion of  this  and  other  inscriptions  see  Veth,  Java,  1 :  40,  43,  54,  68.  For 
the  special  points  cited  in  the  text  see  Yule's  "  Marco  Polo,"  Lond.,  1875, 

2  :  254,  and  his  "  Cathay,"  Lond.,  1866, 1 :  87  ;  Groeneveldt,  "Notes  on  the 
Malay  Archipelago  . . .  from  Chinese  Sources,"  Verhandelingen  Bat.  Gen., 
1877,  39  : 1  :  13,  16. 

2  Rouffaer,  "  Het  tijdperk  van  godsdienstovergang  in  den  Maleischen 
Archipel,"  Bijd.  TLV.,  1899,  6  :  0  :  113.  This  study  is  based  on  sources 
but  recently  rendered  available. 


10  THE   DUTCH   IN  JAVA  chap. 

to  it.  At  the  time  when  the  Dutch  East  India  Company 
began  its  operations  in  Java,  it  found  the  whole  island 
subject  to  monarchical  and  absolute  governments.  These 
governments  were  undoubtedly  of  later  origin  in  the  west 
than  in  the  east  of  the  island  ;  they  had  not  been  in  op- 
eration long  enough  in  the  west  to  destroy  all  the  rights 
of  the  people,  and  had  not  extended  into  thinly  populated 
districts  where  small  tribal  groups  like  the  Badoeis  could 
still  maintain  themselves.  It  may  be  that  remnants  of 
tribal  institutions  are  still  to  be  found  in  the  native  organ- 
ization,!  but  the  people  had  for  the  most  part  passed  far 
beyond  the  tribal  stage  when  the  Dutch  appeared  in  the 
East.  The  territorial  state  under  an  absolute  monarch 
was  the  typical  form  of  political  organization,  and  over  a 
great  part  of  Java  such  states  had  been  in  existence  prob- 
ably over  a  thousand  years.  The  people  had  been  disci- 
plined as  few  of  the  other  Malays  have  been.  They  had 
been  governed  till  they  had  lost  all  power  to  govern 
themselves,  and  they  had  been  repressed  so  that  they  had 
no  longer  the  ability  to  throw  off  a  bad  government.  It 
is  a  fact  of  prime  importance  in  the  history  of  the  Dutch 
in  Java  that  they  found  the  native  institutions  in  this  con- 
dition, not  fresh  and  in  a  course  of  vigorous  development, 
but  old  and  worn,  going  through  their  cycles  of  change 
only  to  return  to  the  starting-point.  Nothing  else  would 
explain  the  ease  with  which  the  Dutch  conquered  and 
ruled  the  island. 

An  idea  of  the   native   political   organization   can   be 

1  This  is  asserted  by  Van  Baak,  "Nota  over  bet  eigendomsrecbt  op 
den  woesten  grond  op  Java,"  Eindresum^,  3,  Bijlage  N. ;  C.  F.  van 
Delden  Laerne,  "Jets  over  den  oorsprong  van  bet  communaal  landbezit 
op  Java,"  Tijd.  TLV.,  1875,  22:260,  268. 


I  THE  In^ATIVE   organization  11 

given  by  selecting  for  description  Mataram,  the  most 
powerful  of  the  states  with  which  the  East  lAdia  Com- 
pany had  to  do.i  In  the  first  half  of  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury this  state  ruled  over  the  greater  part  of  the  island. 
Like  all  of  the  large  native  states  it  had  been  built  up  in 
a  comparatively  short  time  by  conquest,  and  there  was  no 
organic  union  between  its  different  parts.  That  it  was 
no  natural  growth  but  the  artificial  construction  of  a  suc- 
cessful warrior  is  clearly  shown  by  the  organization  of  the 
efovernment.  The  monarch  had  under  his  direct  control 
only  a  small  part  of  the  state  ;  the  rest  was  held  in  his 
name  by  subordinate  princes  who  maintained  just  as 
much  independence  as  they  dared.  A  distant  province, 
left  under  the  rule  of  a  representative  of  the  conquered 
dynasty,  would  be  only  nominally  subject  to  the  monarch, 
while  provinces  near  the  capital  and  ruled  by  members  of 
the  monarch's  family  would  be  really  dependent  on  him. 
In  a  large  part  of  the  state,  the  northeastern  provinces, 
the  scheme  of  administration  was  as  follows  :  Each  prov- 
ince had  its  subordinate  king,  pangeran^  and  beside  him  a 
governor  representing  the  central  authority  ;  throughout 
the  districts  and  towns  of  the  province  each  of  these  offi- 
cials was  represented  by  distinct  subordinates.  Besides 
these  two  groups  of  officials  there  was  a  third,  devoted  to 
the  provincial  administration  ;  each  place  had  two  tax- 
gatherers,  who  reported  directly  to  superiors  in  their 
own  department,  and  were  independent  of  other  offi- 
cers.    Then  over  the  whole  group  of  provinces  were  two 

1  The  following  description  is  based  on  Ryckloff  van  Goens,  "  Reijsbe- 
schrijving  van  den  weg  uit  Samarangli  nae  de  konincklijke  hoofdplaets 
Mataram,  .  .  .  1656,"  Bijd.  TLV.,  1856,  1:4:307-350.  Van  Goens 
was  sent  as  an  envoy  to  the  native  court  and  remained  there  for  some 
time. 


12  THE   DUTCH   IN   JAVA  chap. 

special  commissioners,  who  had  their,  special  agents  every- 
where to  Tv^atch  the  conduct  of  affairs  and  report  daily  at 
the  capital.  Finally  there  was  a  body  of  several  thousand 
inquisitors,  who  ranged  the  country  in  bands  "  like  hunt- 
ing dogs  "  to  see  and  hear  whatever  was  going  on.  They 
had  the  right  of  entry  everywhere,  even  in  the  assemblies 
of  the  greatest  nobles  ;  they  were  "  the  king's  execution- 
ers," set  to  catch  his  enemies,  and  they  were  much  feared 
and  hated.  The  whole  system  was  evidently  framed  with 
but  one  object,  not  of  doing  something,  but  of  preventing 
anything  from  being  done  ;  it  was  based  on  suspicion  and 
fear. 

The  army  was  divided  up  among  the  various  higher 
officials  ;  a  certain  number  of  soldiers  was  ascribed  to 
each,  to  be  raised  from  the  territory  subject  to  him,  and 
that  number  could  not  be  exceeded.  The  king  alone  was 
free  to  keep  as  many  soldiers  as  he  pleased ;  practically, 
of  course,  the  size  of  his  guard  was  limited  by  the  amount 
of  money  and  men  that  he  could  secure  from  his  own  and 
his  vassal  territories. 

One  side  of  the  workings  of  this  system  has  been  de- 
scribed for  us  by  the  Dutch  envoy  who  was  present  at 
court.  The  monarch  appeared  in  public  ordinarily  three 
times  a  week  to  attend  a  tournament  to  administer  jus- 
tice or  to  hold  a  council.  On  nearly  every  day,  however, 
the  nobles  of  the  state,  from  pangerans  down  to  minor 
officials,  were  required  to  attend  court  and  to  wait  through 
the  morning  on  the  chance  that  the  monarch  might  appear. 
They  imperilled  their  fortunes  and  even  their  lives  if  they 
stayed  away  ;  the  monarch  could  assure  himself  of  their 
fidelity  only  by  requiring  their  constant  presence.  Ordi- 
narily  several   thousand,  great   and   small,  attended    an 


I  THE  NATIVE   ORGANIZATION  13 

audience.  Everything  at  court  depended  on  the  monarch's 
personal  favor.  The  nobles  were  fearfully  anxious  lest 
they  should  offend  a  man  who  could  ruin  them  by  a  word, 
and  studied  day  and  night  the  art  of  pleasing  him.  One 
day  the  monarch  ordered  that  Van  Goens's  bodyguard 
should  be  called  in,  but  gave  the  command  to  no  one  by 
name ;  instantly  two  or  three  hundred  nobles  started  off, 
treading  each  otlier  under  foot  in  their  wild  desire  to  call 
six  common  soldiers.  On  another  occasion  the  monarch 
summoned  one  of  Van  Goens's  followers  and  the  whole 
court,  great  and  small,  with  the  exception  of  the  pangerans, 
rushed  after  him  and  introduced  him,  breathless  with  the 
confusion.  The  monarch  laughed,  and  indeed  the  situa- 
tion has  its  amusing  side ;  it  seems  like  a  scene  from  a 
comic  opera.  A  comic  opera  becomes  a  serious  thing, 
however,  when  it  assumes  the  place  of  a  real  government, 
and  not  all  the  incidents  of  Javanese  court  life  were  as 
innocent  as  those  just  described. 

At  the  time  when  this  description  was  written  the  em- 
pire of  Mataram  was  still  young,  and  the  central  govern- 
ment exercised  more  efficient  control  over  the  under-kings 
or  regents  than  was  often  the  case.  The  hold  of  the  sov- 
ereign on  his  subordinates  seems  generally  to  have  con- 
sisted only  in  the  above-mentioned  obligation  on  their 
part  to  appear  at  court  at  certain  periods.^  The  regents 
were  often  nearly  sovereign  in  their  authority  and  can  be 
regarded  in  the  discussion  of  their  administration  as 
independent  kings,  ruling  over  districts  roughly  compar- 

^  Jonge,  Opk.,  5  :  36,  Joumael  of  Haan,  1623;  ih.,  6:  110,  Governor 
General  Maetsuyker  to  Directors,  1668  (Palembang),  In  Banjoemas  the 
nobles  were  required  to  spend  six  months  of  the  year  at  court.  S.  van 
Deventer,  LS.,  2:648. 


14  THE  DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

able  in  size  to  counties  in  the  Eastern  States  of  America.^ 
The  form  of  government  presents  about  the  same  char- 
acteristics in  all  the  different  regencies.  Every  regent 
had  one  or  more  viziers  or  ministers  (pateh^,  who  at- 
tended to  the  actual  business  of  administration,  and  a 
dozen  or  so  high  court  officials,  generally  appointed  from 
liis  relatives.  The  surrounding  country  was  subject  to  a 
descending  series  of  subordinates,  some  assigned  to  the 
government  of  definite  areas,  and  some  given  special  func- 
tions. Raffles  says  2  that  the  executive,  judicial,  and 
fiscal  authority,  united  in  the  person  of  the  sovereign, 
descended  undivided  to  each  subordinate,  but  the  separation 
of  the  fiscal  functions  observed  in  Mataram  is  found  later 
in  the  political  organization,  and  may  well  have  been 
common,  arising  from  the  jealousy  of  the  central  govern- 
ment at  the  concentration  of  power  in  the  hands  of  sub- 
ordinates.^ In  general  the  statement  of  Raffles  is  correct : 
"  Every  officer  has  unlimited  power  over  those  below  him, 
and  is  himself  subject  to  the  capricious  will  of  the  sover- 
eign or  his  minister."  ^  Subordination  rather  than  asso- 
ciation marked  the  system.  In  practice,  of  course,  the 
authority  of  any  official  was  limited  by  his  ability  to  make 
it  effective  at  a  distance.     Each  official,  beginning  at  the 

1  In  de  Jonge,  Opk.,  10  :  237,  260  (Aanmerkingen,  Mossels,  1751,  1754), 
there  is  a  list  of  the  seventeen  regencies  in  Jacatra,  with  the  area  and 
population.  The  mean  area  would  seem  to  be  about  twenty-five  square 
miles,  English,  but  some  are  so  small  that  they  cannot  have  been  inde- 
pendent in  government.  Some  exceeded  100,000  morgen  Dutch,  or  were 
over  300  square  miles.  The  figures  of  population  are  of  little  value,  as 
some  districts  had  been  depopulated  (ib.  p.  248).  A  regency  in  modern 
Java  averages  between  500  and  600  square  miles.  ^  Hist.,  1 :  299. 

3  KoUman,  "Bagelen  onder  het  bestuur  van  Soerakarta  en  Djokjok- 
arta,"  Tijd.  TLV.,  1864,  14:355.  Differentiation  in  the  functions  of 
subordinate  officials  appears  also  in  the  reports  of  Rothenbuhler  and  C. 
de  Groot.  *  Hist.  1  :  160. 


I  THE   NATIVE   ORGANIZATION  15 

bottom,  kept  all  that  he  could  of  the  powers  and  profits 
of  government,  and  so  the  process  went  on  through  the 
various  stages  to  the  sovereign  at  the  head  of  the  series. 
The  public  revenue  consisted  mainly  of  payments  in 
kind  and  of  labor  services  by  the  cultivators  of  the  soil. 
The  money  receipts  were  so  small  that  they  can  be  neg- 
lected. Consequently  officials  could  not  be  paid  money 
salaries,  and  they  were  supported  by  the  assignment  to 
them  of  certain  fractions  of  the  sovereign's  rights  to  prod- 
uce and  labor.  This  system  is  normal  on  a  certain  stage 
of  economic  organization,  and  has  sometimes  created  in 
its  development  a  special  public  class  among  the  people, 
with  hereditary  rights  to  land  and  to  office  as  well.  Ten- 
dencies in  this  direction  are  observable  in  the  history  of 
native  Java,  which  had  to  be  considered  by  European 
administrators  later  in  their  bearings  on  the  tenure  of 
land.  In  general  it  may  be  said  here  that  officials  failed 
to  obtain  public  recognition  of  such  a  privileged  position. 
The  son  of  an  official  never  had  the  right  to  succeed  to 
his  father's  position,  though  he  was  very  commonly  ap- 
pointed to  it,  and  appointments  from  outside  the  families 
of  the  higher  classes  were  rare.  The  office-holding  nobles 
formed  a  class  distinct  from  the  rest  of  the  population, 
with  a  character  and  traditions  of  their  own,  but  accord- 
ing to  the  native  theory  nobility  was  official,  not  heredi- 
tary. Descendants  of  officials  clung  to  the  titles  which 
had  marked  their  ancestors'  position,  and  in  some  dis- 
tricts it  was  hard  to  find  a  man,  even  among  the  common 
people,  who  did  not  claim  a  title  ;  none  had  a  privileged 
position,  however,  unless  he  himself  held  office. ^ 

iC.  de  Groot,  Report,  1823,  TNI.,  1853,  15:1:86.  Crawfurd  said 
that  the  fluctuations  in  fortune  of  members  of  the  office-holding  class 
were  very  great.     Raffles,  Sub.,  92. 


16  THE  DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

Enough  has  been  said  about  the  higher  political  organ- 
ization in  Java  to  form  a  basis  for  the  criticism  of  its 
workings  as  they  appear  in  the  period  of  the  East  India 
Company,  and  to  enable  the  reader  to  appreciate  the  extent 
to  which  the  natives  might  gain  in  passing  under  Euro- 
pean rule.  The  most  evident  fault  of  the  system  was  the 
tendency  to  unrestrained  absolutism  that  appears  in  all 
parts  of  it,  but  especially  in  the  persons  of  the  under  and 
upper  kings.  "The  princes  ruled  over  the  people  with 
absolutely  unlimited  authority,  without  other  laws  than 
those  that  they  themselves  imposed.  The  idea  of  prop- 
erty, even  that  in  wife  and  children,  was  entirely  unknown 
to  the  native,  whenever  the  will  of  his  rulers  came  into 
play."  ^  Everything  depended  on  the  accidents  of  char- 
acter of  a  single  individual.  At  best  the  people  were 
subject  to  caprices  such  as  those  of  the  monarch  Ageng, 
referred  to  in  Van  Goens's  description,  who  allowed  no  man 
to  spend  the  night  in  court,  but  slept  himself,  the  only 
man,  in  the  midst  of  ten  thousand  women.  In  many  cases 
the  Javanese  rulers  were  real  monsters,  crazed  to  an  "  im- 
perial frenzy  "  by  the  power  of  their  position.  Ageng's 
successor,  Amangkoe  Rat,  signalized  his  succession  to  the 
throne  by  the  murder  of  twenty  thousand  individuals,  and 
throughout  his  reign  put  out  of  the  way,  sometimes  with 
his  own  hand,  any  one  against  whom  he  had  the  slightest 
ground  of   suspicion.     When  one  of  his  wives  died,  he 

J  "  Regten  en  verpligtingen,  ...  in  Cheribon,"  TNI.,  1863,  1:1:  146, 
from  a  census  report  of  the  residency  describing  conditions  in  the  time  of 
native  rule.  The  same  account  appears  in  different  times  and  places. 
Coen  wrote  of  Java  in  general,  1619,  "The  law  of  these  countries  is  the 
will  of  the  king,"  de  Jonge,  Opk.,  4:183.  Mossel  wrote  of  Bantam, 
1747,  "The  king  rules  this  kingdom  sovereign  in  the  highest  degree," 
ib.  10  :  119. 


I  THE   NATIVE   ORGANIZATION  17 

starved  a  hundred  women  to  give  expression  to  his  grief, 
then  searched  among  the  wives  and  daughters  of  his  sub- 
jects for  a  beauty  to  become  her  successor.^  We  are  told 
by  a  modern  writer  that  Amangkoe  Rat  is  not  a  fair  type 
of  the  native  ruler,  and  that  the  Dutch  were  really  respon- 
sible for  his  excesses,  as  the  people  would  have  turned  him 
out  if  they  had  not  been  menaced  by  a  foreign  power. ^ 
This  writer,  depressed  with  the  faults  that  he  finds  in  the 
modern  Dutch  government,  is  inclined  sometimes  to  doubt 
whether  the  natives  have  benefited  by  their  change  of  rul- 
ers. It  is  true,  as  he  says,  that  a  bad  foreign  government 
is  not  better  than  a  good  native  one.  That  may  be  granted, 
and  it  may  be  granted  too  that  Amangkoe  Rat  was  the 
extreme  specimen  of  his  kind.  Still,  the  impression  re- 
mains after  reading  the  annals  of  the  native  states  that 
good  rulers  were  few,  that  the  temptations  to  abuse  were 
strong  for  any  man,  far  too  strong  generally  for  princes 
brought  up  in  the  harem.  There  were  some  good  rulers, 
but  they  were  ineffective  through  faults  in  the  system  of 
administration ;  there  was  really  no  good  native  govern- 
ment.^  Over  against  the  opinion  of  Van  Kesteren,  the 
author  cited  above,  may  be  put  that  of  St.  John,  who 

1  Another  ruler  had  a  house  at  court  in  which  he  enjoyed  the  spectacle 
of  naked  women  fighting  with  tigers.  These  examples,  which  might  be 
much  extended,  are  taken  from  Veth  and  from  volumes  6  and  7  of  de 
Jonge,  Opk. 

2  Van  Kesteren,  "  Een  ideaal  voor  den  Indischen  staatsdienaar, "  Ind. 
Gids,  1885,  2  :  1534. 

3  This  assertion,  it  should  be  understood,  is  meant  to  be  confined  to 
Java.  The  tribal  governments  of  Sumatra  and  Bali  may  be  better  than 
poor  European  government,  as  is  asserted  in  TNI.,  1873,  2  : 1  :  141.  In- 
stances of  rulers  with  good  intentions  who  could  not  secure  good  govern- 
ment, through  the  weakness  of  the  administration  or  the  vices  of  royal 
relations,  can  be  found  in  de  Jonge,  Opk.,  11:375  (Bantam);  12:110 
(Soerabaya). 

c 


18  THE   DUTCH   IN   JAVA  chap. 

thought  that  the  Mahay  governments  were  fit  only  for  evil, 
coukl  not  do  good,  that  any  foreign  government  was  bet- 
ter. "  Their  imbecility  is  as  incurable  as  their  despotism 
is  ferocious.  They  deserve  only  ruin.  They  are  at  once 
proud  and  corrupt,  despotic  and  feeble. "^  Between  these 
extremes  I  should  incline  to  St.  John's  view. 

Far  more  serious,  though  less  striking,  than  the  tyranny 
over  individuals,  were  the  effects  of  personal  rule  on  the 
course  of  public  policy.  Veth  says  that  the  native  policy 
was  marked  by  a  course  so  tortuous  as  to  put  to  shame 
the  most  extravagant  Machiavellian.  It  expressed  not 
the  unconscious  tendencies  of  growth  of  a  society,  but  the 
ambitions  or  whims  of  an  individual.  It  dissipated  the 
force  of  the  people  in  lines  that  led  nowhere  or  in  lines 
that  had  to  be  retraced.  The  ruler  of  Mataram  conquered 
one  of  the  eastern  points  of  Java,  only  to  find  that  it  was 
impossible  to  establish  his  sway  there  permanently;  he 
depopulated  the  district  and  left  it.  The  state  of  Mat- 
aram began  to  crumble  immediately  after  the  death  of  its 
founder  ;  to  the  wars  in  which  it  originated  succeeded 
wars  in  which  it  dissolved,  and  the  only  result  to  the 
people  was  misery  and  want. 

The  state  was  often  prevented  from  exercising  its  de- 
structive powers  against  its  neighbors  only  by  internal  dis- 
sensions that  exhausted  its  resources  in  wars  of  no  public 
interest.  The  record  of  family  quarrels  within  the  differ- 
ent dynasties  seems  interminable;  these  family  quarrels 
are  called  the  chronic  evil  of  the  state  of  ;Mataram.  Many 
originated  in  greed  for  power,  many  in  purely  personal  in- 
cidents, such  as  love-affairs  in  which  some  member  of  the 
royal  harem  or  candidate  for  it  was  implicated. 

1  Horace  St.  John,  "The  Indian  Archipelago,"  Lond.,  1858,  1  :  viii. 


I  THE   NATIVE   ORGANIZATION  19 

The  institution  of  hereditary  monarchy  is  ordinarily 
justified  on  the  ground  that  the  state  gains  so  much  from 
having  the  succession  to  the  government  simply  regulated 
and  generally  recognized  that  it  can  afford  to  bear  with 
rulers  who  are  often  weak  and  sometimes  wicked.  Bad 
government  is  better  than  the  anarchy  of  a  war  of  succes- 
sion. In  Java  the  one  great  apology  for  hereditary  mon- 
archy seems  lacking.  By  native  custom  the  rule  descended 
to  a  son  of  the  monarch  born  of  one  of  his  regular  wives ; 
the  heir,  not  necessarily  the  eldest  son,  was  designated  as 
crown-prince  during  the  life  of  his  father,  who  acted  some- 
times with  a  council  of  nobles  in  making  the  nomination. 
The  system  led  to  countless  intrigues  among  the  wives 
and  even  the  concubines  of  the  monarch,  and  gave  no 
assurance  that  the  person  who  managed  to  win  the  royal 
nomination  could  make  good  his  claims  after  his  father's 
death.  It  seems  no  exaggeration  to  say  that  half  or  more 
of  the  serious  wars  in  which  the  native  states  engag-ed 
rose  out  of  the  futile  question  as  to  which  of  two  men 
equally  bad  should  govern  a  certain  territory.  I  have 
seen  no  evidence  that  princes  or  dynasties  won  the  affec- 
tion or  loyalty  of  their  people  in  the  period  of  native  rule. 
The  Dutch  Governor  General  wrote  in  1677,  at  the  time 
of  a  revolt  in  Mataram  by  a  pretender  to  the  crown,  that 
it  was  surprising  that  a  people  used  for  centuries  to  obey 
this  ruler's  ancestors  should,  as  they  did,  give  their  alle- 
giance to  the  rebel  with  entire  indifference.^ 

The  most  important  figure  in  the  central  government 
beside  the  sovereign  was  the  pateh,  or  chief  minister,  who 
appears  even  in  the  smaller  kingdoms  as  the  chief  execu- 
tive of  the  king's  commands.  He  was  supposed  to  do  the 
1  Maetsuyker  to  Directors,  1677,  do  Jonge,  Opk.,  6 :  169. 


20  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

work  of  ruling  while  the  sovereign  enjoyed  the  pleasures. 
This  influential  official  appears  sometimes  as  a  man  of 
vulgar  origin,  made  great  by  the  royal  favor ;  sometimes 
as  a  relative  of  the  king,  retaining  his  position  when  he 
had  become  old  and  useless.^  When  an  able  man  filled 
the  place  he  was  prevented  often  from  accomplishing  any 
good  by  the  sovereign,  who  preferred  to  listen  to  the 
advice  of  his  favorites,  and  thwarted  his  pateh  in  every 
possible  way,  through  jealousy  of  his  influence. ^ 

The  administration  was  fitted  neither  by  its  organization 
nor  by  its  personnel  to  remedy  the  faults  of  the  central 
government.  In  describing  above  the  administrative  or- 
ganization in  Mataram  in  the  seventeenth  century,  atten- 
tion was  directed  to  the  way  in  which  the  various  officials 
were  set  to  watch  and  check  each  other ;  the  spirit  of  this 
arrangement  seems  characteristic  of  the  whole  native 
political  system,  though  it  appears  nowhere  else  so  clearl}'^ 
expressed  in  the  frame  of  organization.  We  find  nowhere 
among  officials  a  feeling  of  mutual  trust  such  as  must 
underlie  all  effective  cooperation.  Every  official  was 
jealous  and  suspicious  of  those  above  him,  beside  him, 
and  beneath  him.  Each  one  made  all  the  profit  he  could 
and  did  as  little  as  he  dared  in  return  for  it.  Offices  were 
gained  from  a  superior  by  favoritism,  and  by  promises  of 
greater  returns  from  the  people  than  had  been  squeezed 
from  them  before.  The  Soenan  (emperor  of  Mataram) 
put  over  Japara  two  of  the  worst  tyrants  in  Mataram,  of 


1  Mem.  of  Siberg,  1787,  de  Jonge,  Opk.,  12  :  89. 

2  Reis  of  Engelhardt,  1803,  de  Jonge,  Opk.,  13  :  156.  The  power  be- 
hind the  throne  was  sometimes  exercised  by  a  European  renegade,  or  by 
a  woman  of  the  lowest  character.  Cf.  M.  L.  van  Deventer,  Gesch., 
1  :  129,  294  ;  2  :  155  ;  de  Jonge,  Opk.,  7  :  215. 


I  THE  NATIVE   ORGANIZATION  21 

whom  one,  the  father  of  one  of  his  favorite  concubines, 
had  already  been  deposed  for  misgovernment,  because 
they  promised  to  secure  for  him  a  present  from  the  East 
India  Company. ^  The  ruler  of  one  of  the  districts  of  Kra- 
wang,  to  maintain  his  personal  power,  appointed  as  sub- 
ordinate officials  inexperienced  men  and  boys  of  twelve  or 
thirteen  years,  over  whom  he  could  be  completely  master. 
I  quote  from  the  report  of  a  Dutch  official.  "  These  boys 
have  no  idea  of  orders  ;  much  less  do  they  know  how  to 
carry  them  out.  They  are  proud  of  their  relationship  to 
the  head-regent,  and  shrink  from  nothing  to  satisfy  their 
desires.  The  common  people  must  contribute  to  every- 
thing, to  their  hunting  and  fishing  parties,  etc.,  so  that  it 
is  no  wonder  that  they  are  listless,  depressed,  and  not  up 
to  their  duties.  The  wretched  inhabitants  pay  little  or 
no  attention  to  their  plantations,  which  they  let  run  waste, 
and  seek  for  nothing  more  than  bare  subsistence,  which 
they  find  in  the  cultivation  of  their  rice-fields."  ^ 

The  higher  officials  spent  their  time  at  court,  drawing 
revenue  from  their  lands  through  agents,  but  visiting 
them  rarely,  and  sometimes,  it  is  said,  ignorant  even  of 
their  geographical  location. ^  The  nobles  of  Bantam, 
toward  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century,  are  described 
as  spending  their  time  in  eating  and  drinking,  chewing 
betel,  and  horse  racing  ;  they  lived  off  the  revenues  of 
their  lands  and  left  business  to  lesser  persons.* 

Such  a  government  as  this  described  was  incompetent  to 

1  de  Jonge,  Opk.,  6  :  181  (1669). 

2  Verslag  of  Guitard,  1790,  de  Jonge,  Opk.,  12  :  197.  Conditions  were 
about  as  bad  in  another  regency  ;  ib.  p.  206. 

2  Raffles,  Sub.,  80,  91,  12-5. 

*  Breugel,  " Beschrijviug  van  het  koningrijk  Bantam"  (1787),  Bijd. 
TLV.,  1856,  2:1:332. 


22  THE   DUTCH   IN  JAVA  chap. 

fulfil  properly  any  of  the  duties  that  belonged  to  it.  It 
could  not  perform  the  first  function  of  government  to 
defend  the  people  against  foreign  enemies  and  maintain 
peace  and  security  at  home.  The  shores  of  Java  are 
lined  with  old  watch-towers,  designed  to  guard  against 
the  inroads  of  pirates,  but  the  pirates  nevertheless  pene- 
trated to  the  very  centre  of  the  island,  plundering  villages 
and  carrying  the  inhabitants  off  into  slavery .^ 

The  central  government  was  unable  even  to  maintain 
peace  between  subordinate  rulers.  The  Governor  General 
wrote  in  1620  that  every  governor  in  Mataram  Avas  ruling 
as  he  pleased  ;  one  governor  was  robbing  the  subjects  of 
another  to  win  the  favor  of  the  emperor  by  the  presents 
which  successful  pillage  afforded.  ^  An  account  of  the 
same  time  gives  an  idea  of  the  anarchy  that  prevailed  in 
Mataram  at  this  period  of  its  greatest  power.  A  noble, 
"  king  of  a  city  "  wanted  the  daughter  of  another  to  wife, 
and  sent  an  embassy  with  presents  to  ask  for  her  hand. 
He  was  told  with  expressions  of  polite  regret  that  she 
was  promised  to  another.  He  sent  a  body  of  two  or  three 
thousand  men,  who  took  the  daughter  by  force,  razing  the 
palace  of  her  father  ;  then  two  other  nobles,  friends  of 


1  Horsfield,  "Essay  on  the  Geography  ...  of  Java,"  n.  d.,  24-25; 
Eindresum^,  2 :  95.  It  should  be  stated  that  both  these  references  are 
from  the  nineteenth  century,  embodying  only  memories  of  an  earlier 
time.  Piracy  increased  considerably  after  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  in  connection  with  a  Mohammedan  religious  revival.  M.  L.  van 
Deventer,  Gesch.,  2  :  289.  The  Company  showed  little  more  ability  than 
the  native  states  in  repressing  piracy,  but  I  see  no  reason  to  suppose  that 
the  Company  was  responsible  for  the  evil.  Under  the  conditions  of 
Malay  government  piracy  was  a  regular  institution  ;  Raffles  says  that  it 
was  "regarded  as  an  lionorable  occupation,  worthy  of  being  followed  by 
young  princes  and  nobles."     liaflfles's  Memoir,  1  :  93. 

2  Coen  to  Directors,  de  Jonge,  Opk.,  4  :  202. 


I  THE   NATIVE   ORGANIZATION  23 

the  outraged  father,  raised  armies  in  his  behalf,  and  at 
the  time  of  writing  a  war  was  impending.  ^ 

Within  the  petty  districts  in  which  the  regents  governed 
there  was  no  security.  The  country  was  overrun  with 
robber  bands.  "  Whoever  went  outside  his  village  with- 
out protection  ran  the  chance  of  being  murdered,"  was 
the  native  testimony  as  to  conditions  in  Bantam  under 
native  rule.  The  Company  did  not  dare  to  send  its  offi- 
cial messengers  without  an  escort  in  the  North  East 
provinces.^  The  many  penalties  against  different  sorts  of 
robbery  and  theft  that  are  found  in  the  Javanese  laws  are 
proof  of  the  evils  against  which  they  were  directed,  but 
there  is  no  proof  that  these  laws  were  effectively  enforced. 
One  is  reminded  of  conditions  that  existed  in  England 
before  the  Norman  conquest  in  reading  of  the  prevalence 
of  cattle  stealing,  and  the  difficulty  that  the  Dutch  expe- 
rienced in  stopping  it  in  the  districts  under  their  pro- 
tectorate. All  judicial  remedies  were  found  ineffective, 
and  it  was  necessary  to  revert  to  the  old  native  custom 
that  no  buffalo  could  be  bought  or  sold  except  in  open 
market.^  A  single  illustration  will  show  how  sadly  jus- 
tice was  administered.  Van  Hoevell,  on  a  journey  in 
central  Java,  came  to  a  deep  rocky  cleft  in  the  ground. 

1  Jonrnael  of  Haan,  1623,  de  Jonge,  Opk.,  5  :  39.  From  a  later  period 
may  be  cited  a  case  in  which  the  Dutch  were  compelled  to  interfere  in 
Cheribon,  to  stop  the  "despotic  reprisals"  of  a  regent,  who  was  kidnap- 
ping the  subjects  of  another  because  they  had  stolen  from  his  people. 
Zwaardekroon  to  Directors,  1719,  de  Jonge,  Opk.,  9:  32. 

2  Eindres.,  3:3;  ib.,S:  42.  In  central  Java  there  was  no  security  in 
the  period  of  native  rule,  and  criminals  escaped  with  impunity.  [Valk] 
"De  toestand  van  Bagelon  in  1830,"  TNI.,  1858,  20:2:76;  KoUman, 
"  Bagelen,"  Tijd.  TLV.,  18G4,  14  :  354.  For  a  description  of  the  lack  of 
security  in  Bantam  see  M.  L.  van  Deventer,  Gesch.,  1  :  28. 

8  Aanmerkingen,  Mossels,  Preangers,  1754,  Jonge,  Opk.,  10:270, 


24  THE   DUTCH   IN  JAVA  chap. 

He  was  informed  on  good  authority  that  under  native 
rule  the  regents  and  lesser  officials  took  criminals  or  any 
men  who  were  in  their  way,  bound  and  left  them  there  to 
die  without  a  trial ;  they  thereby  saved  the  expense  of 
sending  them  to  court  for  trial !  ^ 

In  the  way  of  positive  contributions  to  the  welfare  of  the 
people  the  government  did  practically  nothing.  In  some 
parts  of  Java  there  is  said  to  have  been  a  comparatively 
active  internal  trade,  but  this  was  carried  on  not  only  in 
the  face  of  political  insecurity  and  such  taxes  as  the  inge- 
nuity of  rulers  could  suggest,  but  also  in  spite  of  an  almost 
total  absence  of  roads.  The  Dutch  government  conducted 
an  investigation  of  the  labor  demanded  from  the  people 
under  native  rule  in  the  maintenance  of  roads  and  bridges. 
They  found  it  amounted  to  little  or  nothing,  and  the 
reason  appears  in  one  of  the  answers,  "  because  there  were 
no  roads  or  bridges."  2  Even  in  the  nineteenth  century 
Raffles  found  that  goods  conveyed  by  water  were  generally 
transported  on  pack-animals  or  on  the  shoulders  of  men 
and  women. ^  The  result  was  to  keep  the  people  down  on 
a  low  stage  of  agricultural  organization,  and  to  deny  them 
all  the  comforts  that  could  have  been  obtained  from  a  sys- 
tem of  exchange  and  of  organized  labor.     Native  annals 

1  "  Wreede  strafofeningen  .  .  .  ,"  TNI.,  1840,  3:1: 169.  The  article 
describes  many  of  the  cruel  punishments  current  in  the  native  period, 
mutilations,  setting  men  to  fight  tigers,  and  the  like.  It  appears,  in  a  re- 
port from  Japara,  1674,  that  a  man  who  wished  to  appeal  a  case  to  the 
soenan  in  person  could  do  so  only  on  paying  five  hundred  dollars  (an 
immense  sum  for  a  native),  and  by  giving  over  all  his  wives  to  the  keep- 
ing of  the  soenan.     Jonge,  Opk.,  6  :  191. 

^Eindres.,  3:13.  There  was  one  short  road  in  Bantam,  and  there 
are  scattered  examples  of  roads  in  the  other  parts  of  Java,  but  the  real 
beginning  in  road-building  dates  from  the  efforts  of  the  Company  and  of 
Daendels.  «  Hist.,  1  :  219. 


I  THE   NATIVE   ORGANIZATION  25 

are  full  of  the  records  of  famine  and  pestilence ;  they  arose 
from  a  local  failure  of  the  crops  or  from  one  of  the  many- 
wars,  and  they  were  so  serious  because  it  was  impossible  to 
supply  a  deficit  in  one  part  of  the  country  by  drawing  on 
the  surplus  which  might  exist  in  another.  Alternate  waste 
and  want  characterized  the  organization  of  Java,  as  they 
did  that  of  medijeval  Europe.^ 

Every  movement  of  wares  incident  to  exchange  was  seized 
upon  by  the  rulers  as  an  opportunity  to  levy  toll.  Duties 
were  levied  at  all  the  ports,  and  in  the  interior  the  circula- 
tion of  goods  was  hemmed  by  frequent  toll-gates.  Mar- 
kets existed  not  only  as  a  convenience  for  consumers  and  a 
protection  to  the  validity  of  sales, — they  were  as  much  or 
more  a  device  of  the  governing  class  to  raise  taxes.  No 
trade  could  be  carried  on  outside  the  market,  the  monopoly 
of  which  extended  sometimes  for  a  distance  of  twenty  miles 
or  more.  Government  claims  to  monopoly  were  exercised 
sometimes  in  the  particularly  hateful  form  of  an  engrossing 
of  the  food  supply. 2 

To  this  description  of  the  upper  political  organization  in 
Java  I  have  to  add  only  one  more  point  in  this  place.  The 
machinery  of  government  was  not  only  cumbrous  and 
ineffective ;   it  was  immensely  heavy.     A  Dutch  official 

1  Figures  of  rice  prices  iu  different  parts  of  the  archipelago,  given  by 
de  Jonge,  Opk.,  4 :  15,  show  clearly  the  influence  of  the  lack  of  transpor- 
tation. Dutch  governors  in  the  seventeenth  century  were  directed  to 
keep  in  stock  a  supply  of  rice  for  two  years,  to  avoid  the  famine  that 
might  appear  at  any  time.     Instructions  of  1650,  Mijer,  Verz.,  114. 

^  This  last  feature  of  native  government  was  not  unknown  in  the  nine- 
teenth century.  Raffles  (Memoir,  81)  thought  that  the  idea  of  trade 
monopoly  was  copied  from  the  Dutch,  but  van  Goens  found  it  already 
existing  and  applied  to  the  trade  in  rice,  when  he  visited  Mataram. 
Reisbeschr.,  350.  For  the  abuses  of  the  market  see  especially  Wiese,  in 
Jonge,  Opk.,  13:60;  other  descriptions,  ib.,  13:36,  and  Raffles,  Hist. 
1 :  220. 


26  THE   DUTCH   IN   JAVA  chap. 

estimated  in  1802  that  the  members  of  the  privileged  class 
amounted  to  one-eighth  of  the  whole  population.^  The 
proportion  can  scarcely  have  been  as  large  as  this  in  all 
parts  of  the  island ;  strike  off  a  large  part  of  it,  and  there 
still  remains  a  great  burden,  which  must  have  been  felt 
the  more  as  it  must  have  seemed  such  utterly  dead  weight. 
Passing  from  the  upper  to  the  lower  classes  of  native  so- 
ciety, the  investigator  finds  a  description  of  their  economic 
organization  comparatively  easy.  It  was  the  simple  and 
uniform  organization  of  a  people  living  from  the  soil,  with 
but  unimportant  trade  relations.  The  typical  Javanese 
cultivator  was  the  owner  or  tenant  of  an  acre  or  so  of  irri- 
gated rice  land,  from  which,  with  a  few  crude  agricultural 
implements  and  the  services  of  a  buffalo,  he  secured  the 
greater  part  of  the  food  supply  of  his  family. ^  His  dwell- 
ing was  a  hut  or  cottage,  which  he  could  construct  in  a  few 
days,  and  there  was  little  in  or  about  it  which  was  not  the 
handiwork  of  himself  or  of  some  member  of  his  family. 
"  The  family  of  a  Javan  peasant  is  almost  independent  of 
any  labor  but  that  of  its  own  members,"  wrote  Raffles. 

1  Wiese,  on  Hogendorp's  Bericht,  Jonge,  Opk.,  13:47.  M.  L.  van 
Deventer,  Gesch.,  2  :  297,  accepts  this  as  trustworthy.  D.  van  Hogendorp, 
Nad.  Uitl.,  10,  said  that  of  3693  jonks  rice  land  in  Pekalongan  3134  were 
occupied  by  natives  doing  services  for  the  official  class,  but  I  do  not  feel 
sure  of  the  interpretation  of  this  passage. 

2  I  purposely  avoid  most  of  the  difficulties  and  details  of  the  lower 
organization,  as  their  discussion  in  this  place  vi^ould  be  of  little  profit.  I 
must  notice,  however,  the  assertion  of  Gelpke,  "  De  rijstkultuur  op  Java," 
Bijd.  TLV.,  3  :  9  :  180,  that  rice  was  to  the  natives  an  article  of  luxury  be- 
fore the  nineteenth  century,  and  that  they  lived  on  herbs,  etc.  This  is 
not  borne  out  by  the  report  of  1804,  which  he  cites,  and  cannot  be  recon- 
ciled with  the  constant  reference  to  rice  cultivation  in  the  descriptions  of 
early  native  Java.  Wiese  said  in  1802  that  rice  was  "het  voornaamste, 
ja  bijna  eenige  voedsel  der  Javanen,"  Jonge,  Opk.,  13  :  65  ;  Jaussaud  in 
his  Memoire,  1810,  called  it  the  "principale  nourriture  du  peuple,"  ib., 
13:  514. 


I  THE   NATIVE   OKGANIZATION  27 

In  every  cottage  there  were  a  spinniug-wlieel  and  loom, 
and  in  the  yard  about  it  were  raised  the  fruit  and  vegeta- 
bles that  the  famil}^  consumed.  Any  small  surplus  that 
could  be  spared  was  taken  to  market  to  be  exchanged  for 
salt  fish,  dried  meat,  or  what  petty  luxuries  the  family 
could  afford.^ 

The  class  of  professional  traders  and  artisans  seems  to 
have  been  very  small  in  the  interior,  and  of  no  great  im- 
portance even  at  the  seaports.  We  are  told  of  large  cities 
in  different  parts  of  the  island,  but  the  figures  of  their 
population  were  grossly  exaggerated,  and  in  many  cases 
these  so-called  cities  were  nothing  but  groups  of  vil- 
lages.^  It  is  proper  to  recognize  the  existence  in  Java  of 
a  class  of  people  earning  its  livelihood  by  other  means  than 
agriculture,  but  it  would  be  wrong  to  linger  over  the  de- 
scription of  this  class,  for  its  importance  in  the  economic 
organization  was  small,  and  in  the  political  organization, 
so  far  as  my  studies  have  extended,  absolutely  inconsider- 
able. 

I  pass  then  to  the  topic  that  will  end  this  survey  of  the 
native  organization,  and  take  up  the  political  organization 
of  the  agricultural  class,  the  bulk  of  the  common  people. 
My  object  must  be  to  describe  the  local  political  institu- 
tions peculiar  to  this  class,  and  the  bonds  uniting  it  with 
the  higher  government.     There  is  not,  I  believe,  a  task  in 

1  Raffles,  Hist.,  1  :  95,  121,  182. 

2  A  comparison  of  the  figures  given  for  the  population  of  any  place  at 
different  times  shows  that  they  are  entirely  untrustworthy.  Without 
going  into  details  I  may  say  that  the  largest  places  could  have  had  at 
most  a  population  of  a  few  tens  of  thousands.  Cf.  M.  L.  van  Deventer, 
Gesch.,  1  :  4(1  ;  2  :  39.  Raffles's  estimate,  Hist.,  1  :  118,  that  a  tenth  to  a 
quarter  of  the  people  were  engaged  in  manufactures  or  trade  is  mislead- 
ing, I  am  sure. 


28  THE   DUTCH   IN  JAVA  chap. 

Javanese  history  more  difficult  to  accomplish  with  perfect 
thoroughness,  so  great  is  the  variety  with  which  the 
student  has  to  deal,  and  so  obscure  are  the  causes  for 
many  of  the  differences.  Luckily  it  is  not  necessary  for 
present  purposes  to  attack  the  most  difficult  part  of  the 
problem  — that  dealing  with  the  origins ;  and  in  this  sketch 
it  is  permissible  to  single  out  the  main  features  and  treat 
them  broadly,  to  the  exclusion  of  conflicting  details.^ 

In  some  parts  of  the  island,  especially  the  eastern  and 
western  extremities,  the  natives  were  grouped  in  villages 
closely  similar  to  the  severalty  village  of  British  India. 
The  similarity  is  most  probably  due  to  the  idea,  wide- 
spread in  the  tropics,^  that  a  man  who  undertakes  the 
arduous  task  of  reclaiming  land  from  the  jungle  is  en- 
titled to  enjoy  and  to  hand  down  to  posterity  the  results 
of  his  labor.  One  or  more  men  would  clear  a  piece  of 
the  waste  and  construct  little  by  little  the  irrigation 
canals    necessary   for   efficient   rice    culture  ;    other   men 

1  The  following  sketch  of  village  organization  is  based  mainly  on  the 
material  in  the  Eindresume,  "  Het  onderzoek  naar  de  rechten  van  den 
inlander  op  den  grond  in  de  residentie  Bantam,"  TNI.,  1872,  1 : 1  and  2, 
and  Raffles,  Substance.  The  article  by  L.  W.  C.  van  den  Berg  on  the 
organization  of  the  native  village,  "  Het  inlandsche  gemeentewezen  op 
Java  en  Madoera,"  Bijd.  TLV.,  1901,  6:8:1-140,  is  a  very  valuable 
contribution  to  the  subject,  but  I  cannot  feel  that  it  has  settled  the  doubt- 
ful questions  of  the  origins.  It  is  written  almost  entirely  from  the  legal 
standpoint,  and  disregards  tribal  and  economic  influences.  Van  den 
Berg  is  still  a  firm  believer  in  the  "primitive  Aryan  "  ;  he  quotes  Baden 
Powell,  but  he  holds  fast  to  Maine.  A  number  of  questions  coniiected  with 
the  origin  of  the  different  forms  of  land  tenure  and  village  organization, 
and  the  question  of  the  development  of  communal  land  tenure  I  have 
omitted,  as  being  of  special  interest  only  to  the  student  of  early  institu- 
tions, and  likely  to  be  valuable  to  him  only  when  they  can  be  treated  in 
greater  detail  than  the  plan  of  this  book  would  allow. 

2  B.  H.  Baden  Powell,  "The  Indian  Village  Community,"  Lond.,  1896, 
151,  207. 


I  THE  NATIVE   ORGANIZATION  20 

would  join,  and  in  the  course  of  time  a  new  village  would 
have  arisen.  1  Land  tenure  was  individual  and  hereditary. 
The  leader  in  the  settlement  would  be  the  first  head-man 
in  the  village  ;  his  name  was  long  remembered  in  village 
tradition,  and  commonly,  though  not  always,  his  descend- 
ants enjoyed  the  dignity  of  his  office.  Even  when  the 
office  of  head-man  was  held  for  life,  and  regularly  by  a 
member  of  the  founder's  family,  the  form  of  election  seems 
to  have  been  kept  up  ;  and  in  some  districts  the  elections 
were  held  at  frequent  intervals  and  led  to  constant  rota- 
tion in  office.  Rothenbuhler  describes  conditions  as  they 
were  in  Soerabaya,  where  the  head-man  was  caXled  petinggi. 
"  This  Patingie  is  always  chosen  by  the  inhabitants  them- 
selves, without  the  intervention  of  any  one  else  and  from 
their  own  number  ;  but  his  rule  lasts  no  longer  than  two 
or  three  years,  when  there  is  a  new  election  and  the  old 
Patingie  returns  to  the  class  of  the  common  people,  with- 
out any  advantage  over  the  others.  This  custom  has 
existed  in  Soerabaya  from  time  immemorial,  and  no  regent 
or  chief  would  venture  to  break  it,  for  fear  that  this 
might  cause  an  emigration  of  people.  For  the  inhabitants 
are  extremely  attached  to  this  custom,  and  not  unreason- 
ably so,  because  by  it  each  one  of  them  in  turn  becomes 
Patingie^  and  no  one  needs  to  fear  that  an  unfair  distribu- 
tion of  burdens  and  privileges  will  take  place."  ^  It  was 
the  duty  of  the  petinggi  to  represent  his  village  in  dealings 
with  the  upper  government,  especially  in  the  matter  of 
taxation  ;  he  was  supposed  to  prevent  the  levying  of 
unduly  large  taxes,  and  secure  for  the  village  the  benefits 

1  Cf.  Eindres.,  2  :  69,  81,  describing  this  process  in  Tegal  and  Peka- 
longan ;  Raffles,  Sub.,  100,  etc. 

2  Rothenbuhler,    "Rapport    van  den  staat    en    gesteldheid  van  het 
Landschap  Soerabaija"  [1812],  Verhaud.  Bat.  Gen.,  1881,  41 :  3  :  16. 


30  THE   DUTCH   IN  JAVA  chap. 

of  a  fair  apportionment  among  individuals.  In  return 
for  the  duties  he  rendered,  he  received  a  number  of  per- 
sonal privileges,  and  enjoyed  gratuitously  land  and  labor, 
the  equivalent  of  a  salary.  Besides  the  head-man,  who 
had  many  different  titles  in  different  parts  of  the  island, 
the  village  had  sometimes  a  council  of  elders,  and  com- 
monly an  assistant  or  deputy  head,  a  priest,  and  sometimes 
a  writer  or  secretary. 

It  is  unnecessary  for  the  present  purpose  to  describe  in 
greater  detail  this  form  of  village  government.  The  im- 
portant feature  of  it  is  its  local  independence.  As  long 
as  the  villagers  paid  their  taxes,  they  were  free  to  conduct 
their  own  affairs  as  they  chose  ;  officers  elected  by  them 
attended  to  all  the  business  of  local  government,  including 
taxation,  the  judicial  settlement  of  minor  disputes,  and  the 
maintenance  of  local  police.  There  was  no  equality  of 
possessions  among  the  members  of  tlie  village.  Some 
were  well-to-do,  with  more  land  and  stock  than  they 
needed  for  their  own  subsistence,  and  some  were  landless 
and  had  to  work  for  others  to  gain  their  living.  There 
were,  however,  no  important  social  or  political  class  di- 
visions corresponding  to  these  differences  in  economic 
position  ;  the  form  of  village  which  I  have  just  described 
can  be  called  democratic. ^ 

1  The  classes  described  by  the  resident  of  Japara,  1830,  S.  van 
Deventer,  LS.,  2  :  289,  as  existing  in  the  native  villages  at  the  beginning 
of  the  century,  are  clearly  economic.  The  same  can  be  said  of  the  classes 
described  in  Cheribon,  1830,  ih.,  2  :  270,  the  description  followed  by  Van 
Hoe  veil  and  Plerson,  and  of  those  in  Bantam,  Onderzoek,  TNI.,  1872, 
1:1:  243.  Figures  of  the  distribution  of  the  land  in  the  severalty  vil- 
lages in  the  nineteenth  century  show  that  the  "peasant-holding"  was  the 
rule.  Cf.  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  3  :  144,  147  ;  A.  W.  Kinder  de  Camarecq, 
"Bijdrage  tot  de  kennis  der  volksinstellingen  in  de  oostelijke  Soenda- 
landen,"  Tijd.  TLV.,  1861,  10 :  273. 


I  THE   NATIVE   ORGANIZATION  31 

I  do  not  wish  to  be  understood  to  mean  that  this  vil- 
lage government,  which  seems  so  intelligible  in  its  form 
to  western  minds,  was  a  good  government  according  to 
western  standards.  It  was  no  better  than  the  shiftless  and 
ignorant  men  that  composed  it.  So  far  from  answering 
to  our  ideals  of  the  perfect  "  village  community,"  it  was 
both  weak  and  cruel,  as  will  appear  in  its  later  history. 
It  was,  however,  the  best  of  the  forms  of  local  govern- 
ment that  native  Java  could  offer,  and  it  has  furnished 
the  type  on  which  the  Dutch  in  the  nineteenth  century 
have  modelled  the  other  forms.  It  was  far  better  than 
the  only  other  form  that  I  shall  describe,  which  might  be 
called  the  dependent  or  tenant  village. 

In  the  territories  of  central  Java  included  in  the  old 
state  of  Mataram  the  people  lived  in  village  groups  as 
elsewhere,  but  with  scarcely  any  of  the  property  rights 
and  political  privileges  that  are  found  in  the  other  parts 
of  the  island.  Imagine  a  free  village  ground  down  by 
taxation  until  the  inhabitants  are  in  constant  danger  of 
eviction  for  failure  to  meet  the  demands,  and  have  become 
practically  tenants  at  will ;  imagine  an  agent  appointed  by 
the  landlord  to  be  put  in  place  of  the  head-man  elected  by 
the  villagers  ;  those  are  the  changes  that  must  be  supposed 
to  account  for  the  conditions  that  appear  in  central  Java.^ 

In  the  free  village,  at  least  until  the  latest  period  of 
the  East  India  Company,  there  was  some  limit  to  the 
taxes  which  the  people  bore,  even  though  it  was  as  high 
as  that  reported  by  an  English  official,  —  three-fifths  of 

1  L.  W.  C.  van  den  Berg,  Inl.  Gem.,  Bijd.  TLV.,  1901,  p.  17,  quotes 
evidence  to  show  that  the  dependent  village  was  a  degeneration  from  the 
free  form,  and  Raffles  assumed  that  to  be  the  case,  Sub.,  184.  Many 
natives  have  testified  that  tenure  once  hereditary  had  been  made  precari- 
ous by  the  government.     Cf.  Eindres.,  2  :  97,  123,  etc. 


32  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

the  crop.  In  the  dependent  villages  the  only  check  on  the 
demands  from  above  was  the  fear  of  driving  the  people  off 
the  land.  A  native  official  has  testified  that  in  the  time  of 
native  rule  the  payments  of  the  people  were  fixed,  not  in 
proportion  to  the  extent  of  land  held  or  to  the  production, 
but  in  accordance  with  the  need  for  money  of  the  higher 
officials.!  Officials  in  Java  were  paid,  as  has  been  said 
above,  by  grants  from  the  sovereign  of  that  part  of  his 
revenues  that  came  from  a  certain  district ;  but  in  central 
Java  the  officials  received,  not  the  right  to  a  certain  reve- 
nue, but  the  right  to  the  land  itself,  with  power  to  get 
from  it  all  that  they  could.  Each  official  was  served  by  a 
series  of  agents,  who  bid  among  themselves  for  the  right 
to  collect  dues,  and  made  their  profits  by  the  excess  of 
what  they  could  squeeze  from  their  subordinates  over  the 
amount  that  they  had  to  pay  to  their  superiors.  Last  in 
the  series  came  the  hekel^  himself  a  man  from  the  class  of 
cultivators,  who  sometimes  worked  a  little  land,  but  whose 
main  support  was  the  amount  he  could  make  from  the 
rents  paid  by  the  tenants  under  him.  Each  hekel  had  the 
administration  of  a  very  small  area,  cultivated  by  not 
more  than  half  a  dozen  families,  to  judge  from  conditions 
in  the  nineteenth  century.  "  The  status  of  the  slave  is 
always  deplorable  ;  the  status  of  the  predial  slave  is  often 
worse  than  that  of  the  personal  or  household  slave  ;  but 
the  lowest  depth  of  miserable  subjection  is  reached  when 
the  person  enthralled  to  the  land  is  at  the  mercy  of  peas- 
'  ants,  whether  they  exercise  their  power  singly  or  in  com- 
munities. "^  The  natives  of  Java  were  not  bound  to  the 
soil  ;  but  the  right  of   emigration   was   about   the   only 

1  Eindres.,  2  :  99,  note  (c),  Banjoemas. 

*  Maine,  "Village  Communities,"  Lond.,  1871,  166. 


I  THE  NATIVE   ORGANIZATION  33 

right  left  to  them.  The  demands  of  the  upper  classes 
were  great  enough,  but  these  were  raised  indefinitely  as 
they  passed  through  the  hands  of  middlemen,  and  reached 
their  height  when  they  were  imposed  by  the  hekel.  He 
was  one  of  the  common  people ;  he  knew  all  their  weak- 
nesses and  the  possibilities  of  gain  from  them,  and  he 
used  his  power  mercilessly.  Some  hekeh  raised  twenty- 
fold  what  they  paid  to  their  superiors.^  Their  devices 
for  extortion  were  innumerable.  It  was  notorious  that 
the  office  of  hehel  was  for  sale  to  the  highest  bidder,  and 
the  competition  brought  the  worst  characters  into  the 
position  of  immediate  superiors  of  the  people.^ 

The  real  evil  of  the  organization  is  apparent  only  when 
it  is  realized  that  the  successful  bidder,  who  took  practi- 
cally the  position  of  lessee  of  the  land,  was  also  its  ruler. 
With  the  right  to  raise  taxes  he  bought  at  the  same  time 
the  sovereign's  rights  of  police  and  jurisdiction,  and 
became  lord  and  master  of  his  small  domain. ^  This  con- 
dition was  further  complicated  by  the  fact  that  a  village 
was  very  often  divided  among  a  number  of  different  offi- 
cials, so  that  each  would  be  represented  in  it  by  an  agent 
independent  of  the  others.  A  village  had  sometimes  as 
many  as  five  different  lords,  and    each   one  ruled  as  he 

1  Eindres.,  2  :  122,  note  2,  Bagelen  ;  ih.,  3,  Bijl.  A.,  3.  A  native pa<e/i 
testified  tliat  tlie  cultivator  had  to  pay  fl.  50  or  60  a  year,  ih.,  2:200, 
Madioen.  The  figures  seem  impossibly  large,  but  give  some  conception 
of  the  reality. 

2  Raffles  said  that  a  bekelship  brought  $20  to  $30  in  central  Java. 
Van  Overstraten  reported  that  hekels  v?ere  changed  sometimes  two  or 
three  times  a  year,  to  make  room  for  better  extortioners.  Jonge,  Opk., 
12  :  292. 

8  Raffles,   Sub.,   90;   Eindres.,   2:121;   Valk,    Bagelen,   TNI.,    1858, 
20  :  2  :  80  ;  Gelpke,  "  Het  dessabestuur  op  Java,"  Ind.  Gids,  1879,  2  :  137. 
In  Soerakarta,  it  is  said,  the  hekel  had  public  functions  only  in  excep- 
tional cases.     Eindres.,  3  :  BiJl.  B.,  51. 
V 


34  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

pleased. 1     There  was  no  real  village  government  in  the 
case  of  these  groups. 

It  would  require  much  laborious  research  to  determine 
with  any  approach  to  accuracy  the  proportion  of  people 
living  in  free  villages  to  those  who  had  the  position  of 
dependent  tenants.  In  parts  of  the  west,  where  strong 
states  had  never  grown  up,  and  in  the  east,  where  the 
country  had  been  absolutely  depopulated  and  resettled  by 
immigrants  from  the  island  of  Madoera,  the  tendency  was 
toward  freedom  ;  in  the  remainder  of  the  island,  the  most 
thickly  populated  section,  dependence  Avas  the  rule. 
Even  in  the  villages  where  there  were  individual  peasant 
proprietors  there  was  commoiily  a  number  of  cultivators 
who  worked  land  that  had  been  cleared,  not  by  themselves 
or  their  ancestors,  but  by  men  in  the  service  of  members 
of  the  official  class.  The  occupants  of  such  land  were  ten- 
ants, paying  dues  more  like  rent  than  taxes,  and  in  polit- 
ical subjection  to  the  lord  of  the  land  on  which  they 
]ived.2  On  the  whole,  the  mass  of  the  people  must  be  re- 
garded as  existing  in  a  decidedly  unfavorable  condition. 
Their  characteristics  as  individuals  can  be  explained  more 
readily  by  assuming  them  to  result  from  the  evils  of  their 
economic  and  political  organization  than  by  reference  to 
any  other  cause.     The  Dutch  are  practically  unanimous 

1  Gelpke,  "  Het  landbezit  op  Java  en  de  geschiedenis,"  De  Gids,  1874, 
1 :  54  ;  Valk,  Bagelen,  82. 

2  Space  will  not  permit  more  than  a  mention  of  the  process  of  clearing 
"  op  last,"  with  the  resulting  distinction  of  two  kinds  of  land,  savmhjasa, 
due  to  individual  initiative,  sawah  nefjara,  land  cleared  by  official  direc- 
tion. In  studying  the  history  of  the  native  land  tenures  one  is  impressed 
with  the  importance  of  economic  factors  in  determining  political  subjec- 
tion, as  in  this  case.  Mossels,  in  his  Aanmerkingen,  1751,  speaks  of  the 
regents  as  though  they  owed  their  political  power  mainly  to  economic 
superiority. 


I  THE   NATIVE   ORGANIZATION  36 

in  characterizing  tlie  natives  as  sliiftless  and  indolent. 
What  motive  had  they  to  be  anytliing  else,  when  all  the 
fruits  of  labor  beyond  the  means  of  bare  subsistence  were 
taken  by  political  superiors  ?  They  are  servile  toward  the 
strong,  cruel  to  the  weak,  cowardly  in  the  face  of  enemies. 
All  these  qualities  seem  like  natural  products  of  their 
government.  Climate  and  natural  environment  have  un- 
doubtedly played  their  part  in  motdding  cliaracter,  but  to 
my  mind  the  greatest  encouragement  in  looking  forward 
to  an  ultimate  civilization  of  the  natives  is  the  belief  that 
their  faults  are  due,  not  so  much  to  natural  and  irremedi- 
able causes,  as  to  institutions  which  the  Dutch  can  do 
something  to  destro}^  or  at  least  to  reform. 

European  observers  have,  from  early  times,  been  struck 
with  the  likeness  of  the  native  organization  in  Java  to 
that  of  mediaeval  Europe.^  In  general  features,  de[)ending 
on  likeness  in  the  underlying  economic  organization,  there 
is  considerable  similarity  ;  in  details  the  contrasts  are  as 
striking  as  the  resemblances.  The  comparison  is  improper 
if  it  leads  to  the  two  organizations  being  classed  together 
as  on  the  same  plane  of  development.  In  the  structural 
skeleton  they  seem  alike  ;  in  the  way  in  which  the  living 
parts  worked  together,  still  more  in  the  possibilities  of 
growth,  they  are  vastly  different.  Mediaeval  Europe,  in  its 
darkest  age,  was  far  in  advance  of  native  Java,  and  it  inher- 
ited from  the  Roman  Empire  and  from  Christianity  germs 
of  improvement  which  were  wholly  lacking  in  the  East. 

1  See  the  interesting  parallel  drawn  in  Chap.  VIII  of  Pierson,  Kol. 
Pol.,  in  which,  however,  many  points  would  need  revision  to  be  brought 
into  accord  with  the  views  of  modern  institutional  historians.  The 
Dutch  use  many  woi'ds  from  the  feudal  vocabulary  (over-lord,  vassal, 
appanage,  etc.)  to  describe  the  native  institutions,  and  the  student  has 
constantly  to  guard  against  being  misled  by  them.  - 


36  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

To  a  people  advanced  in  civilization,  as  were  the  Dutch 
at  the  time  of  their  first  contact  with  the  natives,  Java 
offered  wonderful  opportunities.  To  men  in  search  of 
riches  it  was  a  ready  prey  ;  it  was  weak  in  its  ability  to 
defend  itself  against  a  people  with  good  arms  and  organi- 
zation, and  in  its  whole  framework  of  government  it  lent 
itself  to  an  exploitation  for  the  benefit  of  the  conqueror. 
It  is  not  surprising  that  the  Dutch  merchants  of  the 
seventeenth  century  turned  into  warriors  and  statesmen, 
or  that  the  trading  company  they  served  became  a  great 
engine  of  political  extortion.  To  men  seeking  to  spread 
the  benefits  of  civilization,  it  offered  a  field  in  which  a 
little  influence  used  with  intelligence  and  honesty  could 
accomplish  results  so  great  as  to  seem  disproportionate  to 
the  effort  expended.  Government  in  Java  was  so  bad 
because  it  had  no  motive  to  be  better ;  there  was  not  the 
contact  with  other  peoples  and  other  civilizations  that 
would  force  improvement  in  the  mere  struggle  for  exist- 
ence. It  was  far  worse  than  it  needed  to  be,  if  but  a 
small  amount  of  European  intelligence  were  infused  into 
the  conduct  of  affairs.  The  greatest  curse  of  the  island, 
wars  that  exhausted  the  inhabitants  without  any  useful 
aim  in  view,  could  be  stopped  by  the  judicious  use  of  a 
tithe  of  the  resources  that  the  wars  consumed.  The  over- 
grown political  organization,  in  which  the  privileges  and 
profits  of  government  appear  so  prominently  that  one  can 
scarcely  find  in  it  the  idea  of  duties  owed  in  return, 
accomplished  less  for  the  people  than  could  be  accom- 
plished at  a  fraction  of  the  expense  by  a  small  group  of 
European  administrators. 

Yet,  as  later  history  has  proved  that  there  is  a  limit 
beyond  which  a  foreign  power  cannot  safely  go  in  exploit- 


I  THE   NATIVE   ORGANIZATION  ,  37 

ing  the  riches  of  the  island,  so  the  Dutch  are  finding  now 
a  limit  to  their  power  for  good.  As  they  penetrate  fur- 
ther into  the  structure  of  the  native  organization,  each 
official  costs  as  much  as  others  in  the  class  to  which  he  is 
added,  but  he  works  on  smaller  things  and  does  less  good. 
As  the  Dutch  approach  the  natives,  they  find  it  harder  and 
harder  to  reach  them,  and  they  are  still  separated  from 
the  people  by  a  tissue  of  native  institutions.  In  the  pas- 
sive resistance  that  the  people  make  to  impulses  from  out- 
side, the  Dutch  will  always  find  a  stay  to  their  ambitions, 
and  in  a  sense  Java  will  always  be  governed,  as  it  has  been 
in  the  past,  by  the  Javanese. 


CHAPTER   II 

THE   EAST   INDIA   COMPANY:   POLICY 

[Note.  —  The  most  important  source  of  material  for  this  and  the  fol- 
lowing chapter  is  De  Jonge's  collection  of  documents  from  the  colonial 
archives;  it  covers  the  period  down  to  the  fall  of  the  Company,  in  twelve 
volumes.  Mljer's  Verzameling  gives  the  instructions  of  the  home  govern- 
ment, except  those  of  1613,  which  are  to  be  found  in  Tijd.  TLV.,  1853. 
The  instructions  are  printed  also  in  Van  der  Chijs's  collection  of  the  Indian 
statutes.  This  series,  nnd  its  companion  collections  of  the  Dagh  Register 
and  Realia,  all  published  by  the  Batavian  Society  of  Arts  and  Sciences, 
offer  a  great  deal  of  material  on  the  details  of  life  in  India,  but  little  that 
I  could  use  in  this  general  sketch  of  policy  and  government. 

The  best  general  history  of  the  Dutch  in  Java  in  this  period  is  M.  L. 
van  Deventer's  Geschiedenis,  which  is  based  in  part  on  unpublished 
sources.  Meinsma's  Geschiedenis  is  a  faithful  compilation,  with  a  full 
chronological  table  of  contents,  which  makes  it  convenient  for  occasional 
use.  On  special  topics  of  policy  and  administration  Saalfeld  has  been 
superseded  by  Van  Kees  and  Klerk  de  Reus.] 

I  HIS  chapter  v.dll  be  devoted  mainly  to  the  policy  of  the 
Dutch  in  Java  in  the  period  of  the  East  India  Com- 
pany. There  v/onld  be  no  object  in  describing  chrono- 
logicall}^  the  series  of  events,  in  their  innumerable  details, 
arising  "^rom  the  contact  of  Dutch  and  natives.  The 
narrative  history  has  been  admirably  done  in  Dutch,  and 
readers  who  are  sufficiently  interested  to  desire  to  pursue 
the  subject  further  are  referred  to  the  writings  in  that 
language.  There  is,  on  the  other  hand,  no  book  to  which 
they  can  be  referred,  describing  in  compact  form  the  in- 
stitutions rather  than  the  events  of  the  period.  The 
subject   has  been  neglected,  and  yet  it   is  just   the   one 

38 


CHAP.  II  THE    EAST   INDIA   COMPANY :   POLICY  39 

likely  to  be  of  profit  to  the  readers  of  the  outside  world, 
as  presenting  a  summary  of  the  narrative  in  general  terms, 
making  possible  a  comparison  with  the  histor}"  of  other 
colonial  powers.  At  the  same  time  the  subject  of  the 
Dutch  policy  before  1800  is  one  that  lends  itself  especially 
well  to  a  topical  rather  than  a  chronological  treatment. 
We  have  the  word  of  a  Dutch  author,  who  is  an  authority 
on  the  subject,^  that  the  Company  has  no  "  history,"  that 
it  shows  no  development  in  its  organization  or  policy. 
There  are  marked  changes,  from  one  period  to  another,  in 
the  extent  of  its  operations,  and  in  the  financial  results, 
but  the  underlying  principles  of  its  action  remain  almost 
the  same. 

Only  in  the  period  of  the  beginnings  does  it  seem  advis- 
able to  describe  briefly  the  different  events  in  their  rela- 
tions to  each  other,  as  an  introduction  to  a  more  general 
discussion  of  the  policy  later.  The  outburst  of  energy  in 
the  Netherlands  which  led  to  the  war  of  liberation  had 
been  in  large  part  stimulated  by  economic  causes,  and  it 
expressed  itself  in  the  economic  field.  In  the  latter  part 
of  the  sixteenth  century  there  was  a  great  expansion  of 
Dutch  commerce.  With  a  boldness  arising  from  the 
freedom  of  individuals  to  seek  profit  where  they  Avould, 
unhampered  by  the  government  restrictions  that  were 
maintained  in  many  other  countries,  the  Dutch  sent  their 
ships  to  all  parts  of  the  world,  even  to  parts  unknown. 
It  was  natural  that  they  should  seek  beyond  all  else  to 
reach  the  East,  which  they  believed  to  be  the  source  of 
untold  wealth,  and  from  which  they  had  hitherto  been 
kept  by  the  jealousy  of  Spain.  An  agent  was  sent  to 
Lisbon  to  get  such  useful  information  as  could  be  obtained. 
1  Klerk  de  Reus,  NOC,  vii. 


40  THE   DUTCH   IN  JAVA  chap. 

and  as  the  result  of  reports  from  him  and  others,  a  fleet 
was  equipped  and  despatched  from  the  Netherhands  for 
Java  in  1595.  The  losses  of  this  first  venture,  in  ships, 
men,  and  money  did  not  deter  the  Dutch  from  following 
it  up.  A  successful  voyage  meant  a  profit  of  hundreds 
per  cent,  and  atoned  for  a  number  of  disasters.^  In  1598 
twenty-two  ships,  owned  by  different  individuals  or  asso- 
ciations, left  for  East  India,  and  before  1602  sixty-five 
ships  had  made  the  return  voyage. 

The  circumstances  of  this  growing  trade  were,  however, 
unsatisfactory  to  the  participants  and  to  the  government. 
The  ships  or  fleets  of  different  owners  lost  from  view 
everything  except  the  chance  for  immediate  profit;  they 
committed  faults  hurting  those  who  came  after  them,  or 
let  slip  opportunities,  because  they  felt  no  permanent 
interest  in  the  general  welfare  of  the  trade.  Cut-throat 
competition  between  rival  dealers  raised  prices  in  the 
East  and  lowered  them  at  home.  The  States  General 
formed  a  committee  from  representatives  of  the  partici- 
pants in  the  trade,  and  urged  them  to  work  together 
harmoniously  for  their  common  interests. ^  The  traders 
turned  a  deaf  ear  to  advice  which  seemed  to  threaten  the 
chance  for  individual  profit,  and  it  was  clear  that  more 
positive  action  was  necessary  if  the  causes  of  complaint 
were  to  be  removed.  In  1601  the  States  of  Holland  urged 
a  definite  regulation  of  the  eastern  trade,  and  in  1602  the 
States  General  passed  the  law  by  which  the  traders  were 
formed  into  a  single  corporation.     This  law  was  destined 

1  A  voyage  of  1598  brought  a  profit  of  400%,  M.  L.  van  Deventer, 
Gesch.,  1 :  41.  For  fl.  120  the  Dutch  could  buy  in  the  East  an  amount  of 
cloves  worth  in  Europe  fl.  1200.  Craen's  "  Dagboek,"  1605,  De  Jouge, 
Opk.,  3  :  195.  ^  De  JoDge,  Opk.,  1  :  245. 


II  THE   EAST   INDIA   COMPANY:    POLICY  41 

to  form  the  basis  of  trade  and  government  in  the  Dutch 
East  Indies  for  nearly  two  hundred  years.  ^ 

The  importance  of  the  charter  of  1602  comes  from  the 
fact  that  it  not  only  incorporated  the  merchants  who  were 
then  trading  to  the  East  Indies ;  it  gave  to  them  and  to 
their  successors  by  various  renewals  a  monopoly  of  the 
trade,  and  powers  of  government  which  were  practically 
sovereign.  The  peculiar  features  in  the  organization  of 
the  Company,  and  in  its  relations  to  the  state,  which  made 
it  one  of  the  most  remarkable  corporations  of  all  times, 
will  be  discussed  later  in  their  bearing  on  its  efficiency  as 
an  organ  of  government.  I  must  proceed  here  with  the 
narrative  of  its  activity  in  the  East  until  a  point  is  reached 
(1619)  when  it  can  be  regarded  as  firmly  established  in 
Java,  and  shall  then  treat  the  different  sides  of  its  policy 
there. 

In  the  early  years  of  the  Company's  existence  little 
change  can  be  observed  in  the  character  of  commerce  in 
the  eastern  archipelago.  The  Spice  Islands  in  the  Molucca 
group  were  the  great  goal  of  the  trade,  but  other  points 
were  not  entirely  neglected,  and  the  area  of  commercial 
dealings  was  of  great  extent.  Within  this  area  the  Dutch 
ships  and  trading  posts  were  scattered  about  without  any 
centre.  The  faults  of  the  preceding  period  were  still 
apparent.     Ship  captains  still  kept  in  their  hands  most 

1  The  charter  of  1602  is  printed  in  a  number  of  different  places ;  see 
for  references  to  them  Chijs,  NIP.,  1:2.  I  have  used  the  text  of  Cau, 
"  Groot  Placaet-Boeck,"  's  Gravenhage,  1658, 1  :  col.  530-538.  I  omit  here 
as  unnecessary  a  discussion  of  the  general  question  of  the  justification  of 
the  Company,  such  as  may  be  found  in  Leroy-Beaulieu,  Roscher  and  Jan- 
nasch,  Laspeyres,  etc.  The  motives  for  the  charter  of  1602  can  be  found 
concisely  stated  in  Oldenbarnevelt,  "  Verklaring  d.  bev/eegredenen," 
Gedenkstukken,  ed.  M.  L.  van  Deventer,  's  Gravenhage,  1862  f.,  2:  311. 


42  THE   DUTCH   IN  JAVA  chap. 

of  tlie  conduct  of  affairs,  and  they  were  apt  to  forget  the 
permanent  and  general  good  of  the  corporation  which 
they  served  in  their  desire  for  personal  and  immediate 
gains.  1  The  evil  of  this  lack  of  organization  was  felt 
especially  after  the  conclusion  of  the  twelve  years'  truce 
with  Spain,  which  set  free  the  forces  of  that  country  for 
use  in  the  East.  In  the  year  of  the  truce,  1609,  the  first 
great  step  toward  reform  was  taken,  in  the  appointment 
of  a  Governor  General,  to  restore  and  preserve  order,  and 
to  direct,  according  to  the  instructions  given  him,  the 
forces  of  the  Company. 

The  appointment  of  this  official  made  necessary  the 
choice  of  a  political  capital.  For  economic  reasons,  also, 
the  establishment  of  a  centre  of  operations  was  desired. 
Experience  showed  that  ships  and  provisions  decayed 
and  men  sickened  on  the  long  voyages  about  the  islands  ; 
the  establishment  of  a  staple  would  enable  the  Dutch  to 
collect  cargoes  there,  and  despatch  ships  promptly  on 
their  return  voyage  to  the  Netherlands.  The  Dutch 
needed  a  good  harbor,  secure  against  attack  and  well 
situated  as  a  base  of  military  operations  against  their 
enemies,  near  to  good  water  and  supplies  for  shipping, 
and  to  be  reached  conveniently  without  the  need  of  wait- 
ing for  a  change  of  the  monsoon.  The  instructions  of 
1609  suggested  Bantam,  at  the  western  end  of  Java,  and 
Djohor,  near  the  modern  Singapore,  as  possibilities;  it 
was  important  to  have  the  main  position  near  one  of  the 

1  See  the  Kemonstrantie  of  Le  Maire,  1609,  complaining  that  the  Com- 
pany had  done  nothing  but  import  spices  and  a  few  poor  silks,  and  had 
in  its  desire  for  gain  altogether  neglected  the  explorations  which  were  so 
necessary  for  its  future.  De  Jonge,  Opk.,  3:367.  Losses  and  disasters 
in  the  East  were  caused  "principalyk  by  faulte  van  goede  conducteurs," 
Corte  Kem.,  J.  L'Hermite,  1612,  ib.,3:  393.    . 


II  THE    EAST   INDIA   COMPANY:    POLICY  43 

stx'aits  that  gave  access  to  the  archipelago  frora_the  wegt^ 
The  Malay  peninsulaThowever,  was  already  commanded 
by  the  Portuguese,  and  the  Dutch  had  not  fared  well  in 
Bantam,  where  different  factories  had  been  established 
already.  So  the  first  Governor  General  was  directed  to 
enter  into  relations  with  the  king  of  Jacatra,  east  of  Ban- 
tam, and  to  ask  him  for  a  place  for  a  "  rendezvous  of  the 
whole  Indian  navigation."  In  some  respects  a  post  there 
was  more  desirable  than  one  at  Bantam.  ^  Before  the 
arrival  of  the  first  Governor  General,  Both,  such  a  position 
had  been  secured  by  a  contract  with  the  native  prince. 
The  English  attempted,  in  1618-1619,  in  alliance  with  the 
ruler  of  Bantam,  to  drive  the  Dutch  from  Jacatra,  but  the 
attack  failed.  The  territory  of  Jacatra  was  conquered  for 
the  Company  by  Governor  General  Coen,  the  fort  which 
was  destined  to  become  the  capital  of  the  Dutch  East 
Indies  was  named  Batavia,  and  the  territorial  rule  of  the 
Dutch  in  Java  may  be  said  to  have  begun. ^ 

From  this  starting-point  the  Dutch  extended  their  ter- 
ritorial rule  until,  in  1750,  it  embraced  about  one-sixth  of 
the  island,  and  in  1800  three-fifths.^     Mill,  in  his  "  His- 

1  An  English  report  to  the  Court  of  Committees,  1617,  said  that  "  Ban- 
tam was  the  greatest  place  of  trade  in  the  Indian  Seas,"  but  that  Jacatra 
offered  advantages  in  the  supply  of  provisions,  Bruce,  AEIC,  1 :  188. 
For  a  summary  of  the  history  of  the  establishment  of  the  staple  see  Van 
Rees,  KP.,  253,  and  for  most  of  the  facts  cited  by  me  the  early  instructions 
to  the  Governor  General  in  Mijer  or  Chijs,  and  in  Tijd.  TLV.,  1853,  1. 

2  Coen  wrote  home,  in  August,  1619,  "The  foundation  of  the  rendez- 
vous so  long  desired  is  now  laid,"  Jonge,  Opk.,  4 :  179. 

3  The  estimates  of  Professor  van  den  Broek,  in  Encyc.  Ned.  Ind.,  2  :  135. 
A  useful  table  of  the  successive  additions  to  the  Dutch  territory  is  given 
there  ;  the  list  embraces  sixteen  additions  between  1620  and  1800,  and  six 
since  that  time.  Parallel  to  the  course  of  political  expansion,  but  not 
identical  with  it,  is  the  expansion  of  the  Company's  commercial  advantages. 
In  the  annals  of  that  expansion  the  following  points  may  be  noted  as 


44  THE   DUTCH   IN  JAVA  chap. 

tory  of  British  India,"  ^  criticised  the  establishment  even 
of  trading  posts,  by  a  commercial  company,  as  burdening 
the  company  with  unnecessary  expense.  He  would  have 
bad  trade  conducted  without  any  permanent  European 
settlements.  Some  trade  could  undoubtedly  have  been 
carried  on  this  way,  but  under  disadvantages  to  which 
Europeans  were  little  likely  to  submit.  Both  for  political 
and  economic  reasons  the  Dutch  wanted  a  permanent  ter- 
ritorial establishment  to  serve  as  their  cajutal  and  staple. 
When  this  had  been  founded  at  Batavia,  the  Dutch  dis- 
covered that  they  had  but  made  a  beginning  in  terri- 
torial rule,  when  they  thought  that  they  had  reached  the 
end. 

In  contact  with  weak  and  shifty  native  states  it  was 
impossible  for  them  to  refrain  from  pushing  forward  their 
frontier  when  opportunity  offered,  and  opportunity  was 
never  lacking.  At  the  time  of  the  settlement  of  the  Dutch, 
Java  was  in  a  condition  of  political  unrest  that  was  prob- 
ably chronic.  The  most  important  native  states  were  Ban- 
tam, to  the  west  of  Batavia,  and  Mataram  to  the  east,  this 
latter  state  holding  in  subjection  most  of  the  centre  and 
east  of  the  island. ^  Neither  state  formed  an  organic  unity. 
Both  states  were  engaged  in  extending  their  power  over 
rebellious  vassals  or  neighboring  territories ;  both  invited 
interference  by  the  constant  internal  dissension.  The 
Dutch  frontier  was  harassed  by  kidnapping  and  pillaging 

among  the  most  important :  1645,  destruction  of  native  competing  com- 
merce in  Bantam  ;  1677,  monopoly  of  trade  in  Mataram;  1681,  monopoly 
in  Cheribon  ;  1682,  monopoly  in  Bantam  ;  1743,  direct  control  of  ports 
and  customs  duties  on  the  north  coast. 

1  1 :  105. 

-  In  1625  Mataram  included  all  Java  but  Bantam,  Batavia,  and  a  part 
of  the  eastern  end  of  the  island  that  still  maintained  independence. 
M.  L.  van  De venter,  Gesch.,  1 :  140. 


II  THE   EAST   INDIA   COMPANY:    POLICY  45 

incursions  of  the  smaller  nobles,  and  by  quarrels  with  the 
native  governors,  who  were  seeking  to  be  bribed  by  the 
Dutch  to  quiet. 

Economic  considerations  made  that  seem  necessary  which 
was  natural  and  easy  from  the  political  point  of  view.  In 
the  independent  native  states  the  Dutch  had  to  submit  to 
trade  side  by  side  with  European  competitors,  or  to  be 
excluded  entirely  in  favor  of  their  rivals.  A  favorite 
device  of  the  native  sovereigns  to  punish  the  Dutch  for 
any  offence,  and  to  bring  them  to  terms,  was  an  embargo 
that  closed  their  dominions  to  all  trade.  At  best  the  Dutch 
had  to  pay  high  prices  for  the  most  valued  products,  the 
sale  of  which  was  monopolized  by  the  native  governments, 
and  had  again  to  pay  high  duties  at  the  frontiers.  Every 
extension  of  the  political  influence  of  the  Dutch  was  accom- 
panied by  the  grant  of  commercial  privileges  :  the  exclu- 
sion of  competing  traders,  the  settlement  of  low  custom 
and  transit  duties,  and  the  promise  of  native  princes  that 
commercial  products  should  be  sold  to  the  Dutch  at  the 
market  price  or  even  below  it. 

The  Dutch  began  their  career  in  the  East  wdth  no  idea 
other  than  that  of  buying  cheap  and  selling  dear;  their 
ideas  and  aims  were  purely  commercial.^  The  experience 
of  a  few  years  taught  them  that  in  a  country  like  Java 
they  could  not  deal  satisfactorily  with  individual  traders 
and  that  they  must  deal  with  governments.  They  were 
forced,  before  they  knew  it,  to  become  politicians,  seeking 
their  commercial  ends  through  diplomatic  channels,  and 
warriors,  upholding  the  gains  that  had  been  given  them 

1  Cf.  the  Meraorie  of  Admiral  Heemskerck,  about  1600,  on  the  proper 
conduct  of  trade,  Jonge,  Opk.,  2  :448.  I  have  found  nothing  on  the  other 
side  showing  political  aspirations. 


46  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

by  treaty.  Every  indication  goes  to  prove  that  the  terri- 
torial expansion  of  the  Dutch  in  Java  was  involuntary,  at 
least  so  far  as  concerns  the  attitude  of  the  directors  in  the 
Netherlands.  The  East  India  Company  never  became 
dependent  on  war,  as  did  the  West  India  Company,  whose 
interests  led  it  to  oppose  a  truce  on  the  ground  "  that  the 
aforesaid  company  could  not  exist  except  by  war."^  The 
series  of  instructions  to  the  Governors  General,  down  to 
those  of  1650,  which  remained  the  guide  to  policy  through 
the  whole  succeeding  period  of  the  Company,  bade  the 
chief  executive  in  India  never  to  make  war  unless  forced, 
and  especially  to  spare  no  pains  to  keep  peace  with  the 
princes  of  Mataram  and  Bantam. ^  It  seems  to  have  been 
morally  impossible  for  the  Dutch  officials  to  obey  these 
directions  in  the  face  of  all  the  temptations  to  break  them. 
Men  of  vigor,  like  Governor  General  Coen,  who  did  much 
to  shape  the  Company's  military  policy  in  its  early  period, 
came  to  the  conclusion  that  trade  and  war  were  insepa- 
rable ;  war  might  seem  costly,  but  to  their  minds  it  was  the 
cheapest  way  to  attain  peace.  Coen  wrote  to  the  directors, 
when  he  was  Director  General  in  1614,  "  that  trade  in  India 
must  be  conducted  and  maintained  under  protection  and 
favor  of  your  own  weapons,  and  that  the  weapons  must  be 
supplied  from  the  profits  enjoyed  by  the  trade,  so  that  trade 
cannot  be  maintained  without  war  or  war  without  trade."  ^ 
Another  Dutch  official  gave  it  as  his  opinion  in  1655,  that 

1  So  the  directors  of  the  West  India  Company  told  the  Committee  of 
States,  1633,  New  York  Colonial  Documents,  1 :61. 

2  Chijs,  NIP.,  2:156;  Mijer,  Verz.,  115,  Cf.  the  complaint  on  the 
expenses  of  war,  1635,  Chijs,  1 :  272.  I  treat  this  topic  at  greater  length 
in  the  next  chapter. 

3  Jonge,  Opk.,  4:25.  Again,  in  1619,  "without  war  you  will  never 
in  the  world  attain  to  good  peace,"  ib.,  4  :  132. 


11  THE   EAST   INDIA   COMPANY:    POLICY  47 

nothing  but  war  could  put  the  Company  on  the  proper  foot- 
ing with  the  natives,  who  could  be  kept  from  doing  harm 
only  by  being  inspired  with  fear.  He  thought  that  the 
natives  misunderstood  the  motives  of  the  directors  in 
urging  that  trade  be  carried  on  peacefully ;  they  had  been 
known  to  say  to  an  official  of  the  Company,  "  Your  orders 
are  to  live  with  us  in  friendship  and  to  put  up  with  every- 
thing."^ Under  weak  officials  war  became  a  habit,  and 
was  kept  up  for  years  simply  because  they  did  not  know 
how  to  make  peace. ^  It  may  be,  as  was  suggested  by  a 
Dutch  governor  in  the  eighteenth  century,  that  officials 
found  greater  profit  for  themselves  in  war  than  in  peace. ^ 
This  governor  thought  that  the  Company  had  been  ruined 
by  its  wars,  and  lamented  bitterly  its  departure  from  the 
ordinary  lines  of  commerce.*  I  have  found  in  the  reports 
from  officials  in  the  seventeenth  century  only  one  similar 
criticism  of  the  course  that  the  Company  pursued,^  and  in 
general  officials  seem  to  have  been  hearty  supporters  of  the 
war  policy.  In  1689  the  Court  of  the  London  East  India 
Company  instructed  officials  in  the  presidencies  of  Bombay 

1  Van  Goens,  "  Vertooch  wegens  den  presenten  staet  van  de  [0.  I. 
Co.],"  Bijd.  TLV.,  1856,  1  :4:  177. 

2  M.  L.  van  Deventer,  Gesch.,  1  :  185. 

3  Mem.  of  Hartingh,  1761,  Jonge,  Opk.,  10:331.  "  Het  is  zeker  dat 
de  vreede  tot  prejuditie  van  eens  Gouverneurs  beurs  strekt." 

*  16.,  10:  371,  "  alle  oorlogen  of  wat  er  naer  zweemt  of  gelykt,  is  voor 
de  Comp,  land  en  volk  ten  totale  mine.  .  .  .  Ach,  had  de  Corapagnie 
koopman  gebleven,  en  nooyt  het  lyntje  zoo  hard  getrokken  ! "  The 
opinion  expressed  here  received  practical  application  only  a  few  years 
afterward,  when  the  government  refused  to  interfere  in  behalf  of  a  fugi- 
tive prince  in  spite  of  the  privileges  he  offered  it,  on  the  ground  that  the 
Company's  territories  had  reached  a  suflBcient  extent,  and  that  new  estab- 
lishments were  not  to  its  interest.  Mem.  of  van  Ossenberch,  1765,  Jonge, 
Opk.,  11:24. 

^  Report  of  Major  Poolman,  1G76,  Jonge,  Opk.,  6:205. 


48  THE   DUTCH   IN   JAVA  chap. 

and  Madras  not  to  neglect  political  advantages  in  the  pur- 
suit of  trade,  and  referred  to  "  the  wise  Dutch,"  who  in 
their  general  advices  "  write  ten  paragraphs  concerning 
their  government,  their  civil  and  military  policy,  warfare 
and  the  increase  of  their  revenue,  for  one  paragraph  they 
write  concerning  trade."  ^ 

In  other  places  I  shall  describe  the  political  arrange- 
ments by  which  the  Company  ruled  the  lands  it  con- 
quered, and  shall  attempt  to  estimate  the  gains  and  losses 
that  resulted  from  its  territorial  expansion.  I  can  do  no 
more  here  than  indicate  the  motives  througli  which  the 
policy  became  established,  and  discuss  briefly  the  means 
by  which  it  was  carried  into  effect.  Raffles  said  that  it 
was  a  national  boast  of  the  Dutch  that  they  conquered 
Java,  not  so  much  by  force  of  arms  as  by  intrigue  and 
stratagem.  "  It  was  by  corrupting  and  bribing  the  chiefs, 
and  sowing  dissension  among  them,  that  the  Dutch  suc- 
ceeded." ^  This  view  is  substantially  correct.  In  form 
the  Dutch  were  never  carrying  on  a  war  of  conquest 
against  the  natives ;  they  were  always  fighting  for  the 
natives,  and  their  territorial  gains  came  to  them  from  tlie 
interested  party  as  compensation  for  services  rendered. 
It  was  the  ceaseless  quarrelling  among  the  native  states 
that  enabled  the  Dutch  always  to  find  a  party  or  a  person 
to  champion.     They  chose,  when  it  was  possible,  to  suji- 

1  Brace,  AEIC,  3:78.  What  is  meant  by  "general  advices"  is  not 
cleai".  The  description  suits  the  reports  from  colonial  officials,  but  these 
were  supposed  to  be  secret.  The  description  certainly  would  give  a  false 
impression  of  the  instructions  of  the  directors,  which  urged  that  trade 
should  be  carried  on  peacefully,  as  said  above. 

2  Hist.,  1:332.  About  the  same  view  is  presented  in  Raffles,  Mem., 
92.  The  Javanese  said  that  the  Dutch  had  good  hea,ds  but  cold  hearts, 
and  that  it  was  the  reverse  with  them  ;  this  reason  for  their  defeat  is  too 
flattering. 


II  THE    EAST   INDIA   COMPANY  :   POLICY  49 

port  the  legitimate  ruler  in  his  claim  to  the  throne  or  in 
his  attempt  to  put  down  rebellious  vassals  ;  with  their 
help  and  with  his  own  resources  their  candidate  was 
generally  successful,  and  he  was  not  allowed  to  forget  to 
whom  his  success  was  due.^  "Divide  et  impera"  was 
the  natural  motto  to  follow  when  in  contact  with  the 
native  political  organization,  and  was  the  principle  which 
accounts  for  the  greater  part  of  the  Dutch  success. ^  In 
attempting  to  pick  their  way  in  the  tortuous  paths  of 
native  politics  the  Dutch  made  mistakes  which  were  some- 
times followed  by  disastrous  results,  and  the  course  that 
they  pursued  in  some  cases  is  decidedly  questionable  from 
the  standpoint  of  modern  ethical  standards.  There  is 
much  to  criticise,  but  there  is  something  of  boldness  and 
sagacity  that  commands  admiration  in  this  side  of  Dutch 
policy.^ 

While  recognizing  the  great  importance  of  diplomacy 

1  "  Hoe  is  de  Kompagnie  in  't  bezit  barer  landen  op  Java  gekomen  ?  " 
TNL,  1856,  18:2:40,  45. 

-  Hartingh  wrote  in  1761,  "Tliat  whicli  has  so  long  been  fought  for, 
and  the  foundation  on  which  the  Company  must  exist,  and  has  had  to 
base  itself  upon  from  the  beginning,  and  that  too  which  has  made  her 
great  —  is  division."  De  Jouge,  Opk.,  10 :  372.  I  must  apologize  for  the 
translation,  but  it  is  impossible  to  turn  bad  Dutch  into  good  English  even 
by  taking  minor  liberties  with  the  arrangement  of  words.  The  idea 
expressed  by  Hartingh  can  be  found  in  a  number  of  other  places. 

3  Any  one  desirous  of  a  full  idea  of  the  difficulties  which  confronted  the 
Dutch  in  dealing  with  the  native  states  can  be  referred  to  an  extract  of 
the  secret  deliberations  of  the  Council  (Jonge,  Opk.,  10:  281),  where  the 
attitude  to  be  assumed  toward  the  Soenaii  is  debated.  The  question  was 
as  complex  as  any  in  our  modern  international  politics.  Louw,  "  De 
derde  Javaansche  Successie-oorlog,"  Batavia,  1889,  1,  3,  believes  that  the 
deposing  of  the  Soenau  in  1704  was  responsible  for  much  of  the  anarchy 
of  the  following  period.  As  an  example  of  the  courage  and  guile  of 
Dutch  diplomacy  I  would  refer  to  the  narrative  of  two  envoys  sent  to 
one  of  the  native  states  in  1714.  J.  A.  van  der  Chijs,  "  Hoe  de  Compagnie 
soms  met  Javaansche  regenten  handelde,"  Tijd.  TLV.,  1879,  25  :  222  ff. 

E 


50  THE  DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

in  explaining  the  expansion  of  Dutch  influence  in  Java, 
it  seems  to  me  mistaken  to  minimise,  as  some  would  do,^ 
the  part  played  by  actual  force.  No  amount  of  diplomacy 
would  have  availed  without  the  army  which  the  Dutch 
maintained  and  which  was  in  pretty  constant  service. 
Diplomacy  did  not  make  it  possible  for  the  Dutch  to  dis- 
pense with  an  army,  but  enabled  them  to  get  along  with 
a  surprisingly  small  one.  In  1619  the  total  land  forces  of 
the  Dutch  in  the  East  were  only  about  fifteen  hundred 
men,  and  of  these  less  than  four  hundred  were  in  Java. 
Governor  General  Coen  wrote  that  the  English  were 
ashamed  to  find  that  they  had  been  beaten  by  a  pack  of 
boys. 2  About  fifty  years  later  the  army  in  Java  had  been 
increased  to  a  little  over  one  thousand,  of  which  half  were 
Europeans.^  The  numbers  grew  with  the  extension  of 
Dutch  territory,  but  even  in  the  eighteenth  century, 
when  the  Company's  army  reached  its  greatest  size,  it 
counted  only  about  ten  thousand  men,  scattered  among 
the  different  possessions  of  the  East.*  The  native  ele- 
ment, of  which  the  army  was  largely  composed,  counted 
for  little  when  the  recruits  were  taken  from  Java  proper, 
as  was  the  custom  until  the  latter  part  of  the  period.^ 


1  Hoe  is  de  Komp. ,  39. 

2  Jonge,  Opk.,  4:184,  201. 

sinstr.  of  Speelman,  1678,  Jonge,  Opk.,  7:196.  In  1679  only  382 
Europeans  were  reported,  ib.,  7  :  36. 

*  See  the  figures  and  discussion  in  Klerk  de  Reus,  NOC,  112. 

6  Van  Hogendorp  wrote  in  1799  tliat  the  armed  men  were  useless  which 
the  native  regents  furnished  the  government  according  to  contract. 
Schets,  Eindres.,  2  :  Bijl.  LL.,  154.  The  Javanese  were  such  cowards  that 
on  one  occasion  four  hundred  of  them  in  the  Company's  army  fled  when 
they  saw  in  the  distance  thirty  men  whom  they  took  for  Madoerese. 
Jonge,  Opk. ,  7  :  122.  The  Madoerese  are  much  braver  and  are  said  to  be 
capable  of  development  into  good  soldiers. 


II  THE   EAST   INDIA   COMPANY:   POLICY  61 

The  European  soldiers  were  the  scum  of  all  nations. 
They  were  poorly  paid,  ill  treated,  and  half  disciplined  ; 
they  fought  in  a  strange  country,  under  a  debilitating 
climate,  constantly  subject  to  sickness.  Nothing  shows 
in  a  more  striking  way  the  weakness  of  the  natives  and 
of  their  organization  than  the  almost  uniform  success  that 
attended  these  few  companies  of  Europeans,  in  their 
conflicts  with  native  armies  many  times  their  size  and 
provided,  in  part  at  least,  with  the  same  arms.^ 

The  foregoing  sketch  of  the  territorial  expansion  of  the 
Dutch  in  Java  seems  necessary  for  a  proper  understand- 
ing of  other  features  of  the  Dutch  policy,  but  it  may  be 
proper  again  to  warn  the  reader  that  this  expansion  came 
about  gradually  and  almost  unconsciously.  It  certainly 
formed  no  part  of  the  original  plan.  The  Company  was 
according  to  its  charter  and  its  real  design  a  commercial 
corporation,  granted  only  such  military  and  political 
functions  as  were  thought  necessary  to  enable  it  to  keep 
its  place  in  the  eastern  trade.  Throughout  the  Com- 
pany's history  commerce  remained,  in  appearance  at  least, 
the  main  object  of  its  existence. 

The  principle  on  which  this  commerce  was  conducted, 
from  the  beginning  to  the  end  of  the  Company's  existence, 
was  the  principle  of  monopoly ;  that  one  word  gives  the 
essence  of  the  Company's  commercial  policy.  Exclusive 
privileges  of  trade  were  granted  in  the  charter,  and  were 
emphasized  in  the  earliest  instructions. ^     Monopoly  was 

1  It  is  impossible  to  get  accurate  figures  of  the  native  armies ;  Dutch 
and  Javanese  vied  in  exaggerating  them.  Cf.  M.  L.  van  Deventer, 
Gesch.,  1 :  231  note.  From  seven  different  figures  given  in  the  first  seven 
volumes  of  De  Jonge  I  get  the  impression  that  the  army  of  Matarara  in 
the  seventeenth  century  counted  ten  to  twenty  thousand  men  in  the  field. 

2  "  Instr.  voor  de  kooplicden,"  1603,  Jonge,  Opk.,  3  :  207. 


52  THE   DUTCH   IN  JAVA  chap. 

the  central  feature  in  Coen's  bold  plan  of  expansion  in 
the  archipelago,  which,  within  a  little  more  than  a  gen- 
eration, led  to  the  subjection  of  a  field  of  commerce 
greater  than  that  of  the  whole  Mediterranean  Sea.^  The 
directors  wrote  in  1647  to  the  Governor  General  to  warn 
him  against  illicit  trade,  saying  that  the  Company  must 
not  depart  from  "  the  principle  that  has  been  her  only 
object  from  the  beginning,  that  the  profits  of  trade  may 
be  enjoyed  by  the  shareholders  alone."  ^  The  principle 
of  monopoly  was  proclaimed  in  the  instructions  of  1650, 
remaining  in  force  for  one  hundred  and  fifty  years,  and 
it  was  expressly  recognized  in  all  official  reports  down  to 
that  of  the  committee  of  1795  whicli  immediately  pre- 
ceded the  fall  of  the  Company.^ 

Protests  against  this  policy,  in  the  Netherlands  and  in 
Java,  and  abortive  plans  to  modify  it  will  be  noted  later, 
as  will  also  its  injurious  effect  on  commerce.  In  this 
place  attention  will  be  directed  to  only  one  of  the  effects 
of  the  monopoly  policy,  its  influence  in  forcing  the  Dutch 
to  war  with  their  European  commercial  competitors. 

The  Dutch  fought  for  trade  with  the  representatives  of 

1  Van  Eees,  KP.,  229.  As  will  appear  immediately,  Coen  proposed  a 
breach  in  the  monopoly,  but  his  proposal  was  rejected. 

2,Tonge,  Opk.,  6:2. 

3  The  instructions  of  1650  stated  that  "  the  whole  welfare  of  the  East 
India  Company  of  this  country  consists  in  this,  that  she  may  enjoy  solely, 
to  the  exclusion  of  all  others,  the  fruits  of  the  trade  granted  alone  to  her." 
Chijs,  NIP.,  2  ;  136;  Mijer,  Verz.,  74.  The  official  report  of  1761  said 
that  the  Company's  aims,  from  the  time  of  the  first  voyage  to  the  Spice 
Islands,  "  have  been  directed  to  only  one  object,  to  have  exclusive  posses- 
sion of  these,  and  so  become  sole  master  of  their  fruits  and  spices,  that 
such  a  market  may  be  made  for  them  as  her  existence  may  demand." 
"  Rapport  over  's  Compagnies  Regt  op  de  Groote  Qost,  door  E.  de  Klerk, 
J.  E.  van  Mijlendonk  en  W.  E.  Alting,"  Verhandelingen  Bat.  Gen.,  1868, 
33  :  22,  48.    Cf.  Eapport  v.  Com.  Gen.,  1795,  De  Jonge,  Opk.,  12  :  348. 


II  THE   EAST   INDIA   COMPANY:  POLICY  53 

half  a  dozen  European  nations.  With  the  Portuguese 
and  the  English  the  conflict  was  especially  severe.  The 
first  Dutch  fleet  that  arrived  in  Bantam,  in  1596,  found 
the  Portuguese  established  there,  and  had  a  quarrel  with 
them  ;  it  was  tlie  beginning  of  a  conflict  that  ended  only 
in  1641,  when  the  Dutch  captured  the  important  post  of 
Malakka,  and  broke  the  power  of  the  Portuguese  in  the 
archipelago. 

With  the  English  the  struggle  was  longer.  The  Eng- 
lish sought  at  first  the  Indian  islands,  rather  than  that 
part  of  the  mainland  which  has  become  associated  with 
their  name,  and  the  first  factories  of  the  London  East 
India  Company  were  those  established  in  Sumatra  and 
Java,  on  the  voyage  of  1601-1603.1  In  spite  of  the  fact 
that  Dutch  and  English  were  theoretically  friends,  the 
relations  between  them  in  the  archipelago  differed  little 
from  those  of  Dutch  and  Portuguese.  The  desire  of  each 
to  exclude  the  other  from  the  trade  led  to  constant  con- 
flict that  grew  sometimes  into  formal  war.  An  Indian 
councillor  wrote  to  the  directors  in  1618  that  a  plot  just 
discovered,  between  the  king  of  Bantam,  the  English, 
and  the  French,  to  destroy  the  Dutch  settlement  at  Jacatra 
(Batavia),  was  the  fourth  of  the  kind  that  had  been 
made. 2  The  siege  of  Batavia  by  the  English  in  1618 
has  already  been  noted.  In  1619  a  Dutch  fleef  of  six  sail 
attacked  four  ships  of  the  London  East  India  Company, 
and  there  was  a  severe  action  in  which  one  English  ship 
was  sunk  and  three  others  were  captured.  The  home 
governments,  realizing  the  danger  of  conflicts  in  the  East, 

1  Mill,  HBL,  1:26;  Brace,  AEIC,  1:151.  The  following  narrative 
is  based  largely  on  the  material  in  Bruce. 

2  Jonge,  Opk.,  4:87. 


54  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

and  desiring  to  prevent  them,  formed  by  treaty  in  1619  a 
"  Council  of  Defence,"  consisting  of  an  equal  number  of 
members  of  each  company.  The  trade  was  to  be  divided 
between  the  two  companies,  and  this  council  was  to  main- 
tain their  common  interests.  The  council  was  established 
at  Batavia,  and  some  general  articles  of  the  treaty  were 
carried  into  effect.  In  1621-1622  the  council  employed 
a  combined  English  and  Dutch  fleet  in  an  attack  on 
Manila.  This  expedition,  however,  led  to  a  quarrel  and 
separation,  and  the  treaty  proved  to  be  a  source  of  evil 
rather  than  of  good.  Its  provisions  were  vague,  and  their 
execution  was  impossible  in  the  face  of  the  policy  of  mo- 
nopoly which  guided  the  course  of  both  nations.  On  the 
expiration  of  the  Twelve  Years'  Truce,  1621,  the  Dutch 
fitted  out  expeditions  which  nominally  were  to  act  against 
the  Portuguese  and  Spanish,  but  which,  under  various  pre- 
texts, were  employed  to  oust  the  English  from  their  trade 
strongholds.  The  "  massacre "  at  Amboyna  embittered 
feeling  for  generations.  In  answer  to  an  admonition  from 
the  directors  to  keep  on  good  terms  with  the  English, 
Governor  General  Coen  wrote  in  1622  that  this  could  not 
be  done  unless  the  Dutch  should  leave  not  only  India  but 
the  whole  earth  ;  friendship  with  the  English  meant  the 
total  ruin  of  the  Company. ^  The  political  troubles  at 
home  weakened  the  support  of  the  English,  and  embold- 
ened the  Dutch  attack.^      In  1628  the  English  president 

1  Jonge,  Opk. ,  4 :  265.  In  his  "  Advys,"  1G23,  Stukken,  90,  he  wrote  in 
regard  to  the  English  "that  the  least  concession  gives  the  greatest  quiet 
and  peace." 

2  In  1649  an  English  pepper  ship  was  taken,  and  its  cargo  confiscated 
by  the  Dutch  ;  the  Governor  General  at  Batavia  replied  to  a  complaint  by 
saying  "that  the  English  were  traitors  and  had  no  king,  and  he  would 
do  them  all  the  injury  in  his  power."     Bruce,  AEIC,  1  :  446. 


II  THE  EAST  INDIA   COMPANY:   POLICY  66 

and  council  removed  from  Batavia,  where  they  had  been 
suffered  to  stay  for  a  time  by  the  Dutch,  to  a  position  in 
the  independent  state  of  Bantam,  which  they  made  their 
political  capital  and  commercial  staple  in  the  East.  Their 
presence  there  was  one  of  the  motives  to  the  Dutch  con- 
quest of  Bantam,  which  occurred  in  1682,  and  forced  them 
to  withdraw.  The  English  never  regained  their  position 
in  Java,  but  in  the  eighteenth  century  they  established 
posts  in  other  parts  of  the  archipelago  ;  throughout  the 
century  they  carried  on  an  illicit  trade  with  the  Dutch 
possessions,  which  the  Dutch  felt  as  a  serious  infraction 
of  their  monopoly,  but  which  they  were  never  able  to 
stop.i 

In  regard  to  private  merchants  of  the  Netherlands  the 
Company  maintained  a  monopoly  which  was  absolute  ;  the 
Dutch  Company  was  never  troubled  by  interlopers  or  by 
rival  corporations,  as  was  the  London  Company. ^  After  a 
comparatively  short  period  in  which  their  monopoly  was 
opposed  at  home,  it  was  accepted  by  all  the  Dutch  as  a 
permanent  institution  and  regarded  as  a  part  of  their 
national  greatness.  The  only  serious  and  long-continued 
pressure  aiming  at  a  breach  of  the  monopoly  came  from 
within  the  Company,  and  applied  not  to  the  trade  in 
general  but  only  to  that  part  of  it  carried  on  within  the 
eastern  possessions.      The  demand  for  the  opening  of  the 

1  As  late  as  1769  the  directors  thought  it  worth  their  while  to  devote 
part  of  an  official  communication  to  censuring  the  Governor  General  for 
furnishing  supplies  to  an  English  ship  ;  ships  in  distress  might  be  helped 
repair  their  disasters,  nothing  more  could  be  allowed.  Jonge,  Opk., 
11  :  95. 

2  The  way  in  which  it  treated  a  ship  of  the  West  India  Company  that 
stopped  at  Java  in  1722  was  calculated  to  discourage  similar  visits  ;  see 
the  account  in  Van  Rees,  KP.,  70-71. 


56  THE   DUTCH   IX   JAVA  chap. 

internal  trade  in  the  East  was  destined  to  be  constantly 
repeated,  and  never  fully  satisfied.  It  arose  in  connection 
with  plans  of  colonization,  and  the  two  topics,  free  trade 
and  colonization,  can  best  be  discussed  together. 

Nothing  in  the  charter  of  the  East  India  Company 
shows  that  the  founders  looked  beyond  ordinary  commerce 
to  the  establishment  of  permanent  Dutch  settlements  in 
the  East.  Soon  after  the  beginning  of  territorial  rule, 
however,  the  idea  was  advanced  that  colonization  with 
Dutch  settlers  was  the  only  way  in  wdiich  to  insure  the 
possession  of  land  that  had  been  conquered. ^  This  idea  was 
taken  up  and  pressed  by  Governor  General  Coen  after  the 
establishment  of  Batavia,  and  formed  one  part  of  a  great 
scheme  of  his  that  would  have  changed  the  whole  char- 
acter of  the  Company's  policy  if  it  had  been  carried  out. 

Coen  saw  before  him  a  rich  country,  capable  of  support- 
ing in  comfort  multitudes  of  people  who  could  earn  only 
a  bare  subsistence  at  home.  He  believed  that  the  settle- 
ment of  these  people  in  India  would  save  the  pay  of  gar- 
risons and  fleets,  would  increase  the  territorial  revenues 
of  the  Company,  and  would  set  free  its  resources  for  use 
against  foreign  enemies.  The  financial  condition  was 
already  so  bad  that  he  urged  his  plan  as  the  only  way  to 
avert  disaster  to  the  Company. ^  To  effect  the  immigra- 
tion Coen  proposed  that  thereafter  officials  should  bring 
their  families  with  them,  that  other  persons  should  be 
encouraged  to  come  in  the  ships  of  the  Company  or  even 
of   private  individuals,  and    finally,  the  most   important 

1  Corte  Rem.  of  J.  L'Hermite,  1612,  Opk.,  3  :  390. 

2  Coen  advocated  this  plan  in  different  reports  and  writings  extending 
over  a  number  of  years.  I  have  summarized  it,  without  regard  to  its 
chronological  development,  from  De  Jouge,  Opk.,  5:  115,  and  Coen, 
Stukken,  137,  119. 


II  THE   EAST   INDIA   COMPANY:   POLICY  57 

part  of  the  plan,  that  the  iuiernal  trade  should  be  thrown 
open  to  the  colonists.  They  were  to  pay  duties  to  the 
Company,  and  sell  to  it  all  their  wares,  so  that  it  would 
be  relieved  of  the  burden  of  collecting  cargoes,  but  would 
still  have  a  monopoly  of  the  commerce  with  the  mother 
country.! 

Before  leaving  India,  in  1623,  Coen  gave  practical 
effect  to  his  theory  by  opening  the  trade  with  the 
Coromandel  coast  to  the  citizens  of  Batavia.  His  pro- 
posals were  presented  to  the  Committee  of  Seventeen  at 
home,  were  discussed  from  time  to  time  by  them,  and 
finally  tabled  in  1626 ;  in  1627  the  Governor  General  was 
strictly  forbidden  to  allow  any  freedom  of  trade  to  private 
individuals.^  In  1630  the  right  of  internal  trade  was 
restricted  to  those  who  had  special  permission  for  the 
voyage  from  the  Governor  General,  and  many  of  the 
colonists  returned  home.  Without  the  chance  to  engage 
in  commercial  ventures,  there  was  very  little  to  keep  them 
in  Java.  For  some  time  little  was  done  to  further  colo- 
nization ;  the  Indian  officials  either  agreed  with  the  views 
of  the  home  government,  or  were  cautious  and  half 
hearted  in  urging  a  change.^  In  the  instructions  of  1650 
it  was  stated  to  be  the  intention  of  the  Company  to  favor 
the  citizens  of  Batavia  so  far  as  it  could  without  injuring 

1  Jonge,  Opk.,  5  :2.  His  proposals  went  so  far  even  as  to  admit  men  of 
all  nationalities,  except  public  enemies,  to  trade  at  Batavia.     Stukken,  124. 

2  Jonge,  Opk.,  5 :  3  ff.  Coen  had  some  colonists,  but  of  a  very  poor 
class ;  they  were  mostly  discharged  soldiers  and  sailors  and  abandoned 
women,  a  godless  lot  that  gave  more  trouble  than  they  were  worth.  See 
Schiff,  "Kolonisatie  op  Java,"  Tijd.  TLV.,  1869,  17:111. 

3  Governor  General  Brouwer  to  Directors,  1685,  Opk.,  5  :  219 ;  Gov- 
ernor General  van  Diemen  to  Directors,  1640-1641,  i6.,  5 :  242,  252.  The 
Committee  of  Seventeen  replied  to  Van  Diemen  that  the  main  reason  for 
the  formation  of  the  Company  had  been  to  make  gain  by  abolishing  com- 


58  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

itself,  but  as  the  whole  welfare  of  the  Company  was  said 
in  another  part  of  the  instructions  to  depend  on  its  ab- 
solute monopoly  of  trade,  the  citizens  had  very  little  to 
which  to  look  forward.^ 

It  would  be  unprofitable  to  narrate  in  detail  the  pro- 
posals for  a  more  liberal  system  in  the  Company's  com- 
mercial system  in  the  East.  The  evils  of  this  system 
were  apparent  in  India,  in  deterring  colonization,  in 
throwing  into  the  hands  of  natives  or  foreigners  the 
trade  that  might  have  been  carried  on  by  Dutch  citizens, 
and  in  stimulating  smuggling  by  these  foreigners,  by  the 
Dutch  citizens,  and  by  the  officials  of  the  Company  them- 
selves. Representations  were  frequently  made  to  the 
home  government,  to  be  met  only  with  the  old  reply,  that 
the  Company  had  exclusive  monopoly  for  its  policy  and 
could  not  tolerate  competition  from  any  source. ^ 

Interest  in  the  question  of  colonization  did  not  revive 

petition,  and  hence  they  were  opposed  to  commercial  colonies.  N.  P.  van 
den  Berg,  "Een  smeekscrift  van  de  Bataviaasche  Burgerij,"  Tijd.  TLV., 
1875,  22  :  536.  Berg  prints  petitions  of  the  Batavian  citizens  for  better 
treatment,  that  were  considered  for  a  time  but  led  to  nothing. 

1  Mijer,  Verz.,  74,  114.  The  directors  asked  for  the  opinion  of  the 
Indian  officials,  and  in  this  case  they  supported  the  monopoly.  Schiff, 
Kol.  Tijd.  TLV.,  1869,  135  note. 

2  For  the  free-trade  schemes  after  1650  see  Van  Rees,  KP.,  261  ff.  ;  De 
Reus,  NOC.,255  ff.  and  Beilage  ;  Schiff,  Kol.  Tijd.  TLV.,  1869,  117  fi. 
Schiff  interprets  a  re.solution  of  the  Committee  of  Seventeen,  1662,  as 
bidding  the  Indian  government  to  show  moderation  in  executing  the  laws 
concerning  trade  monopoly,  but  in  1676  the  directors  wrote  to  the  Gov- 
ernor General  that  the  trade  of  private  individuals  had  proved  to  be 
"harmful,  yes,  ruinous  ...  a  pest  and  sore  in  the  Company's  body," 
and  that  it  would  ruin  the  Company  unless  vigorously  opposed.  Jonge, 
Opk.,  6  :  159.  It  appears  from  the  contracts  or  treaties  made  with  native 
princes  that  the  principle  of  excepting  hidividuals  from  the  Company's 
monopoly  by  granting  them  passes  to  trade  in  the  interior  was  main- 
tained. Jonge,  Opk.,  7  :  372  (Cheribon,  1681);  ih.,  8  :  215  (Bantam,  1682); 
ib.,  8  :  264  (Mataram,  1705). 


n  THE   EAST   INDIA   COMPANY:   POLICY  59 

until  near  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century,  when 
Baron  van  Imhoff  presented  to  the  directors  a  scheme  for 
a  reform  of  the  traditional  policy,  which  won  great  favor 
at  the  time,  and  led  to  his  appointment  as  Governor 
General. 1  A  novelty  in  the  plan  that  Imhoff  attempted 
to  carry  out  was  the  establishment  of  an  agricultural 
colony.  A  few  Dutch  peasants  were  led  to  emigrate,  and 
were  given  laud,  but  the  attempt,  the  only  serious  one  of 
its  kind  in  the  history  of  the  Company,  proved  an  entire 
failure.  The  directors  imposed  impracticable  conditions 
as  to  the  settlement  of  the  colonists,  and  surrounded  them 
with  all  sorts  of  restrictions.  The  colonists  wasted  their 
time  on  crops  unsuited  to  the  place,  were  discouraged  by 
the  competition  of  the  natives  and  by  violence  suffered 
from  them,  and  dwindled  away.^  On  the  point  of  com- 
mercial freedom  Imhoff  secured  some  concessions,  but 
nothing  approaching  to  real  freedom  of  trade  in  the 
archipelago  ;  trade  was  conducted  as  before  by  foreigners 
and  by  the  Company's  servants  rather  than  by  the  Dutch 
citizens  in  whose  favor  the  privileges  were  supposed  to 
be  granted. 

The  attitude  of  the  government  in  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury can  be  read  in  a  memorial  of  Governor  General 
Mossel,  written  in  1752.3  He  realized  the  evils  of  the 
monopoly,  and  proposed  that  it  should  be  limited  to  trade 

1  Medals  were  struck  with  Imhoff' s  bust  on  one  side,  "  Spes  melionim 
temporum  "  on  the  reverse ;  he  was  sent  out  to  India  in  a  ship  specially 
built  and  named  De  Hersteller  (reformer).  Kalff,  "  Een  koloniaal  her- 
vormer,"  Ind.  Gids,  1894,  1  :  950. 

2  The  total  number  of  these  colonists  was  not  more  than  a  score  or 
two.  See  the  account  of  them  in  J.  Hagemann,  "  Over  de  Europesche 
boeren,  1742-1760,"  Tijd.  TLV.,  1869,  17:60  ff.  Schiff,  Kol.,  148-153, 
prints  a  document  describing  their  later  condition. 

3  Jonge,  Opk.,  10  :  199-223,  especially  215  ff. 


60  THE   DUTCH  IN   JAVA  chap, 

in  certain  articles  and  witli  certain  countries.  The 
sovereign,  he  said,  must  not  ply  a  universal  trade,  "for 
not  everything  can  be  run  profitably  " ;  it  should  confine 
itself  to  "  distinguished  and  privileged "  articles,  suited 
to  its  high  estate,  and  let  the  common  people  live  from 
the  refuse  (^afval),  from  which  they  could  make  small 
profits  when  no  one  else  could.  The  fault  of  Mossei's 
scheme  was  the  same  that  rendered  fruitless  all  the  others  ; 
the  "  refuse  "  from  the  Company's  trade  did  not  satisfy 
private  entrepreneurs,  and  they  traded  either  not  at  all 
or  illicitly  in  competition  with  the  Company.  Every 
few  years  down  to  the  end  of  the  century  there  was  a 
so-called  "  regulation  of  the  free  trade,"  which  was  really 
a  revision  of  the  previous  restrictions.  The  Company 
maintained  its  monopoly  unbroken  almost  to  the  last.^ 

The  main  part  of  the  Company's  commercial  policy 
was  embodied  in  the  one  idea  of  monopoly ;  other 
features  were  less  important.  Current  mercantilist  ideas 
were  expressed  in  a  reluctance  to  pay  specie  for  wares 
purchased,  and  reiterated  instructions  to  make  purchases 
only  with  goods. ^  So  far  as  any  trade  was  permitted 
in  the  East  aside  from  that  carried  on  by  the  Company,  it 
was  confined  in  narrow  limits,  to  minimise  its  danger  to 

1  Jonge,  Opk.,  vol.  11-12,  contains  a  gi-eat  number  of  these  regula- 
tions ;  moi-e  details  could  be  found  by  searching  the  Plakaatboek.  Reus, 
NOC,  261,  dates  the  beginning  of  a  more  liberal  regime  from  Governor 
General  van  der  Parra,  1771 ;  from  then  on  the  monopoly  was  crumbling. 
"What  may  be  regarded  as  an  infraction  of  the  monopoly  principle  before 
that  time  was  the  establishment,  in  1751,  under  charter  from  the  Indian 
government,  of  a  company  to  trade  with  the  west  coast  of  Sumatra;  it 
was  abolished  in  1757,  and  so-called  "free-trade"  reintroduced.  Jonge, 
Opk.,  10:  319  note. 

2  Cf.  Coen,  Stukken,  81,  85;  Jonge,  Opk.,  4:278;  tlie  same  ideas 
constantly  reappear. 


II  THE   EAST   l^UIA   COMPANY:   POLICY  61 

the  Company,  and  was  regulated  for  the  benefit  of  manu- 
factures in  the  Netherlands.^ 

The  carrying  trade  of  the  Company  was  organized  on 
an  elaborate  system,  established  in  time  of  war  and  re- 
maining unmodified  throughout  the  later  period.  Tlie 
ships  sailed  always  in  fleets,  of  which  three  commoidy  left 
the  Netherlands  in  a  year.  Most  of  the  ships  returned  in 
one  great  body,  the  ''  return-fleet,"  which  was  required 
by  the  directors  to  avoid  tlie  English  Channel,  and  sailed 
lionie  by  the  north  of  Scotland  to  lessen  the  danger  of 
attack.  It  is  said  that  tlie  \oya,ge  occupied  ordinarily  six 
or  seven  months. ^  The  mean  number  of  ships  leaving 
the  Netherlands  annually  was  less  than  twenty-five,  tak- 
ing the  figures  for  the  Avliole  period,  1G03-1781.2 

1  Private  trade  at  most  of  the  ports  except  Batavia  was  either  pro- 
hibited or  was  burdened  with  extra  duties.  As  an  example  of  the  way 
in  which  trade  was  moulded  to  suit  the  views  of  the  government  may  be 
cited  a  regidation  of  1701.  To  favor  direct  trade  with  the  port  of  Malakka 
a  double  duty  was  levied  on  all  goods  brought  to  Java  from  other  parts 
of  the  straits  of  JMalakka.  Jonge,  Opk.,  10 :  380.  I  have  found  evidence 
of  a  desire  to  protect  the  home  manufacturers  only  in  the  latter  part  of 
tlie  eighteenth  century.  It  was  ordered  in  1753  (Jonge,  Opk.,  10:226), 
"  to  support  the  factories  of  our  native  country,"  that  no  woollens  other 
than  those  made  in  the  Netherlands  should  be  imported  or  sold,  and  in 
1802  Wiese  referred  to  the  restrictions  on  trade  as  necessary  to  protect 
home  manufactures.  I  have  seen  nothing  like  the  provision  imposed  on 
the  London  East  India  Company  in  the  charter  of  1693,  \\hich  required  it 
to  export  English  manufactures  to  the  value  of  £150,000  in  a  season. 
Bruce,  AEIC,  3:133. 

2  Reus,  NOC,  121.  In  the  voyage  described  by  Leupe  ("Vrouwen 
aan  boord  van  Compagnieschepen,"  Ind.  Gids,  1881,  2:682)  the  ship 
consumed  more  than  a  year  in  reaching  Batavia.  For  further  details  the 
reader  is  referred  to  Goens,  "  Lotgevallen  van  een  Hollandseh  retourschip 
in  1665,"  De  Gids,  1896,  2  :  295  ff.  ;  and  the  anonymous  article  in  Bijd. 
TLV.,  1862,  2  :  6  :  202  ff.,  entitled  "  De  bevelhebber  eener  retourvloot." 

3  Reus,  NOC,  119.  He  compares  the  figures  of  1847,  when  282  ships 
arrived  at  Batavia  from  abroad.     In  1897  over  six  hundred  steam  and 


62  THE   DUTCH   IN  JAVA  chap. 

The  character  of  the  commerce  of  the  Dutch  East 
India  Company  can  be  learned  from  the  figures  given  for 
the  cargo  of  a  return-fleet  of  eleven  ships  in  1739.1  j^ 
thousands  of  gulden  the  figures  were  as  follows:  The 
total  was  2316  ;  of  this  amount  a  little  over  1000  were 
credited  to  the  mainland,  and  the  remainder  came  from 
the  islands.  Some  of  the  wares  came  from  other  sources 
than  Java,  tea  from  China,  and  spices  from  the  Molucca 
group  ;  premising  that  I  give  the  values  of  the  main 
wares  in  the  order  of  their  importance  :  tea,  460,  coffee, 
304,  pepper,  212,  sugar,  67,  mace,  59,  nutmegs,  33,  camphor, 
33,  indigo,  29,  cloves,  25,  gambler  (cutch),  22.  Variations 
would  appear  of  course  from  year  to  year,  but  so  far  as 
regards  Java  the  general  character  of  the  trade  remained 
the  same  throughout  the  eighteenth  century.  It  was 
based  on  a  few  great  staples  that  could  be  grown  to 
advantage  in  the  island  and  that  were  eagerly  desired  in 
Europe.  It  was  the  object  of  the  Company  to  control  tlie 
source  of  supply  of  these  articles,  and  by  regulating  the 
amount  thrown  on  the  market  in  Europe  to  fix  prices  as  it 
pleased.  An  early  historian  of  the  Company  ^  says  that  if 
a  surplus  of  any  product  accumulated,  it  was  buried  or 
burned  rather  than  that  it  should  be  sold  on  a  declining 
market. 

In  payment  for  these  wares  the  Company  exported  to 

sailing  ships  traded  with  Dutch  India  from  America  and  the  chief  countries 
of  Europe.     Jaarcijfers,  Kolonien,  1897,  81. 

1  Governor  General  Valckenier  to  Directors,  1739,  Jonge,  Opk.,  9  :  285- 
287.  "With  this  list  may  be  compared  another  statement  in  Governor 
General  Hoorn  to  Directors,  1707,  Opk.,  8:  135-142,  which  gives  about 
the  same  impression.  In  the  eighteenth  century  spices  formed  a  much 
less  important  part  of  the  trade  than  in  the  seventeenth. 

2  Valentijn,  quoted  in  Van  Rees,  KP.,  286. 


n  THE   EAST   INDIA   COMPANY:   POLICY  63 

India  specie  and  manufactures,  mainly  textiles,  so  far  as  it 
made  payment  at  all  in  a  commercial  sense.  It  is  a  remark- 
able feature  of  the  East  India  Company  that  a  very  large 
proportion  of  its  wares  came  to  it  in  a  political  rather  than 
an  economic  way,  as  tribute  and  not  by  exchange.  This 
was  true  especially  in  the  later  period  of  the  Company's 
history  in  Java,  when  its  real  trade  dwindled  away  until 
it  became  inconsiderable.  In  the  beginning  the  Company 
traded  like  any  other  merchant,  establishing  factories 
where  its  agents  collected  the  wares  of  the  country  and 
held  them  for  shipment.  These  factories  were  maintained 
later,^  but  declined  constantly  in  the  amount  of  products 
they  supplied,  in  proportion  to  the  amount  received  in  the 
way  of  "contingents"  and  "forced  deliveries." 

Both  contingents  and  forced  deliveries  were  supplies  of 
products  exacted  annually  from  the  native  governments 
of  Java  as  a  recognition  of  the  supremacy  of  the  Company. 
In  theory  the  contingents  were  fixed  amounts  of  products 
due  annually  from  the  native  rulers  for  a  small  return  or 
for  nothing,  while  the  forced  deliveries  varied  in  amount, 
and  were  sold  to  the  Company  for  a  price  agreed  upon. 
In  their  origin  contingents  were  purely  political  tribute, 
while  the  deliveries  had  the  appearance  of  economic 
contracts.      In    fact,   however,    both    were    political    in 


1  An  idea  of  one  of  them  is  given  in  a  report  by  Mossel,  1747  (Jonge, 
Opk.,  10  :  222)  ;  trade  in  Bantam  was  carried  on  in  a  fortress  in  tlie  city, 
by  a  commander  and  some  subordinate  agents,  witli  a  garrison  of  tliree 
companies.  I  liave  seen  little  to  show  just  the  character  of  the  relations 
between  the  Dutch  agents  and  the  native  or  Chinese  merchants.  A  clause 
in  a  contract  with  Bantam,  1686  (Opk.,  8  :  210),  leads  one  to  suspect  that 
even  these  relations  were  not  purely  economic  ;  by  this  clause  none  of  the 
Company's  people,  buying  wares,  was  to  take  them  away  by  force  before 
the  seller  had  agreed  to  the  price  and  received  it. 


64  THE    DUTCH   IN   JAVA  chap. 

character  and  no  distinction  can    be    observed  between 
tliem.i 

In  the  early  treaties  made  by  the  Dutch  with  the  native 
governments  the  provisions  were  mainly  political,  bearing 
on  questions  of  alliance,  of  extradition,  and  the  like  ;  other 
provisions  gave  the  Dutch  trading  privileges  in  the  inte- 
rior, but  nothing  more.^  First  in  the  treaty  with  Mataram, 
1677,  the  Soenan  promised  to  supply  four  thousand  meas- 
ures of  rice  annually  to  the  Company  at  the  market  price. 
Soon  afterwards  (1786)  the  Sultan  of  Bantam  was  forced 
to  agree  that  all  the  pepper  of  his  dominions  should  be 
sold  to  the  Company  at  a  certain  price  per  pound. ^  About 
the  same  time  the  contingent  system  was  introduced  into 
the  Preanger  regencies  (formerly  dependent  on  Mataram,  in 
western  Java),  and  each  of  the  native  rulers  there  had  set 
for  him  a  certain  amount  of  pepper,  indigo,  cotton  yarn, 
or  the  like,  that  he  must  get  from  his  people  and  give  to 
the  Company.  The  system  spread  rapidly  after  its  estab- 
lishment. With  every  increase  of  their  political  power 
the  Dutch  worked  deeper  into  the  native  organization,  and 

1  Deliveries  were  sometimes  gratuitous  (cf.  e.g.  Opk.,  11 :  258),  and 
contingents  were  often  paid.  Contingents  were,  so  far  as  I  know,  always 
fixed  in  amount.  Daendels,  Staat,  9,  says  that  deliveries  included  the 
whole  crop  of  a  district.  This  was  sometimes  true,  as  in  the  Bantam 
treaty  of  1686,  but  more  commonly  a  certain  amount  was  stipulated  for 
delivery.  The  Dutch  did  not  secure  in  this  way  a  perfectly  regular  sup- 
ply ;  great  fluctuations  appear  in  the  amounts  of  coffee  delivered  1744- 
1766  (Opk.,  11:68),  and  the  regents  often  fell  far  behind  their  engage- 
ments (i6.,  11  :  488,  giving  a  list  of  products  which  the  regents  had  paid, 
and  which  they  still  owed  in  1780). 

2  Cf.  De  Jonge,  Opk.,  3  :  313  (not  executed)  ;  3  :  352  ;  5  :  79  ;  5  :  286  ; 
6  :83. 

3  De  Jonge,  Opk.,  7  :  81,  165  ;  8  :  213.  The  order  regulating  the  con- 
tingent system  in  the  Preangers  (printed  in  Tijd.  TLV.,  1869,  17  :  355  ff.) 
was  issued  in  1698,  not  1689  as  given  in  M.  L.  van  Deventer,  Gesch.,  2  :  20. 


11  THE   EAST   INDIA   COMPANY  :    POLICY  65 

reached  more  rulers  on  whom  they  coukl  impose  their 
tasks.  The  list  of  wares  taken  grew  until  it  covered  most 
of  the  native  products  of  any  commercial  value,  and  the 
Dutch  used  their  opportunity  to  introduce  through  the 
means  of  contingents  some  new  wares  which  they  thought 
might  be  produced  to  advantage.^ 

The  way  in  which  the  system  was  founded  on  the  native 
political  organization  is  described  by  a  Dutch  official  who 
was  in  northeast  Java  at  the  close  of  the  eighteenth  century. 

"  According  to  a  principle  of  the  feudal  system  of  gov- 
ernment the  country  or  the  land  is  the  property  of  the 
prince  or  the  landlord ;  and  since  the  coast  provinces  have 
been  ceded  by  the  native  princes  to  the  Company,  it  has 
the  property  right  in  the  land  there.  This  land,  divided 
up  into  great  districts,  it  makes  over  to  regents,  under  the 
name  of  Adipattijs,  Toemongongs,  etc.,  on  conditions  com- 
monly called  contracts,  whereby  these  regents  pledge  them- 
selves to  furnish  products,  some  for  nothing  and  some  for 
a  fixed  payment,  as  well  as  to  do  services  and  in  case  of 
Avar  to  support  the  Company  with  armed  men.  On  the 
other  hand,  these  regents  turn  over  the  land  again  to  the 
common  Javanese,  to  cultivate  it,  and  to  pay  over  to  them- 
selves a  part  of  the  fruits  and  produce,  that  they  may  be 
able  to  supply  their  contingents  to  the  Company  and  sup- 
port themselves.  ...  In  this  way  the  regents  can  be 
regarded  as  great  farmers  (^Pagters'),  who  have  leased  land 
from  the  Company  and  lease  it  out  again  in  small  divisions 
to  the  common  people."  ^ 

The  advantages  of  this  system  to  the  Dutch  are  obvious. 

1  Cf.  lists  in  Opk.,  8  :  356  ff. ;  11  :  250,  258,  464,  etc. 

2  Dirk  van  Hogendorp,  "  Scliets  of  Proeve  "  (1799)  ;  from  an  extract 
in  Eindresum^,  2,  Bijlage  LL.,  p.  152. 


66  THE   DUTCH  IN   JAVA  chap. 

Taking  the  native  organization  as  they  found  it,  they  used 
its  taxing  power  to  secure  the  wares  they  wanted,  and 
were  so  relieved  from  the  necessity  of  building  up  an 
extensive  commercial  organization  of  their  own.  The 
sums  that  they  paid  the  regents  for  their  forced  deliveries 
were  far  below  tlie  market  prices  of  the  goods,  and  they 
saved  all  the  expense  of  administration  by  making  native 
officials  do  their  work.  The  evils  of  the  system  will 
appear  in  discussing  the  condition  of  the  natives  in  the 
period  of  the  Company.  From  the  very  fact  that  the 
Dutch  refused  all  the  responsibility  of  administration, 
while  they  increased  the  burdens  on  the  native  organiza- 
tion, the  faults  of  the  native  political  system  were  magni- 
fied many  fold,  and  every  gain  of  the  Dutch  implied  a 
disproportionate  increase  in  the  labor  and  hardships  of  the 
common  people. 

In  previous  sections  I  have  described  the  general  fea- 
tures of  the  Company's  commercial  system  ;  there  remain 
to  be  considered  in  this  connection  only  the  details  of  the 
Company's  policy  in  regulating  production  and  prices  in 
Java.  For  illustration  I  shall  take  the  coffee  and  sugar 
cultures-;  two  of  the  most  important  cultures  in  Java  in  the 
eighteenth  century. 

Coffee  had  been  introduced  from  Arabia  in  the  latter 
part  of  the  seventeenth  century. i  The  demand  for  the 
product  grew  rapidly  in  the  Netherlands,  and  the  Com- 
pany's directors  wrote  constantly  to  the  Indian  govern- 

1  The  date  of  the  introduction  of  the  coffee  tree  varies  as  given  in  dif- 
ferent authors  (1661,  1696,  1723)  ;  it  has  not  seemed  worth  while  to  sift 
the  evidence  on  this  point.  P.  A.  Leupe,  "Invoering  der  koffijkultuur 
of  Java,"  Bijd.  TLV.,  1858,  22  :  56,  says  that  the  coffee  was  brought  to 
Java  as  a  curiosity  in  1696,  and  that  the  first  Java  coffee  canae  to  mai-ket 
in  1712. 


II  THE   EAST   INDIA   COMPANY:    POLICY  67 

ment  urging  an  increase  in  the  amount  supplied  for  the 
return-fleet.  The  government  met  this  demand  in  the 
characteristic  way,  stimulating  production  not  through 
the  offer  of  higher  prices,  but  through  commands  laid  on 
the  native  regents  to  furnish  the  amounts  required  as  con- 
tingents or  forced  deliveries.  As  it  takes  the  coffee  tree 
some  years  to  reach  maturity,  there  was  almost  always  a 
discrepancy  between  the  amount  produced  in  Java  and  that 
which  the  directors  thought  they  could  sell  to  good  advan- 
tage in  the  Netherlands  ;  this  led  to  violent  fluctuations  in 
the  government's  policy,  and  to  most  arbitrary  orders  in 
the  amounts  demanded  and  the  prices  paid.  To  make  up 
a  decline  in  the  Company's  revenue  the  price  paid  for  the 
coffee  supplied  was  reduced  in  1725,  and  this  price  was 
again  cut  in  1726.^  The  motives  and  pretexts  on  which 
the  Company  acted  may  be  seen  in  an  order  of  the 
executive  committee  in  The  Hague  confirming  this 
action.  It  recited  the  fall  of  the  Company's  profits, 
complained  that  the  natives  were  growing  rich  at  its 
expense  (!),  and  charged  them  with  using  their  money  to 
buy  firearms ;  it  ordered  that  the  price  should  be  reduced 
one-half,  and  that  one-half  of  this  lower  price  should  be 
retained  by  the  Company  because  of  the  low  state  of  its 
treasury,  but  that  interest  on  this  should  be  paid  to  the 
regents,  and  presents  made  to  them,  to  secure  their  influ- 
ence in  effecting  the  change. ^  The  amount  of  coffee  de- 
livered to  the  Company  had  declined  to  one-half  in  1730  ; 
natives  neglected  or  destroyed  their  plantations  in  spite  of 
the  threats  of  the  government.     In  less  than  five  years, 

1  Kapport,  1731,  Opk.,  9 :  159. 
.  2  Verbaal  d.  Haagsche  Besoigne,  1727,  Opk.,  9  :  93.    Part  of  the  pay 
sometimes  took  the  form  of  truck. 


68  THE   DUTCH   IN  JAVA  chap. 

however,  the  government  was  commanding  what  it  had 
just  before  prohibited ;  it  saw  no  other  way  to  protect 
itself  against  the  great  supply  of  coffee  which  it  had, 
stimulated  them  to  uproot  the  excessive  coffee  trees,  and  it 
forbade  the  planting  of  more.  It  followed  this  policy  from 
1733  on,  in  various  parts  of  Java,  but  changed  before  1740, 
and  began  again  to  order  the  establishment  of  new  plan- 
tations.^ 

Up  to  a  certain  point  it  received  the  product  of  these 
plantations  at  fixed  low  prices ;  beyond  that  the  producers 
must  be  content  to  let  their  crop  spoil  unless  they  could 
market  it,  in  spite  of  severe  penalties,  through  smugglers. 
In  1744  native  rulers  complained  that  the  Company  would 
take  from  them  only  a  quarter  of  the  crop  that  the}^  could 
deliver.2  The  oonditions  of  the  coffee  culture  were  more 
settled  in  the  latter  part  of  the  eighteenth  century,  bnt 
the  vices  of  the  Company's  policy  continued  as  long  as 
itself  existed.  In  1788  the  directors  wrote  to  the  Gov- 
ernor General  that,  to  stimulate  the  coffee  culture,  he 
might  assure  the  natives  that  there  would  be  no  more 
extirpation,  or  prohibitions,  but  in  May,  1796,  an  order 
was  given  that  the  cultivation  of  coffee  in  northeast  Java 
should  stop.  In  September  of  the  same  year  another 
order  was  issued  that  the  culture  should  be  stimulated  in 
every  possible  way.^ 

Sugar  differed  from  coffee  in  that  it  was  a  manufactured 

1  Klerk  de  Reus,  NOC,  229  ff. 

2  Imhoff ,  ' '  Reis  van  den  Gouv.  Gen.  .  .  .  in  de  Jakatrasche  Boven- 
landen,"  Bijd.  TLV.,  1863,  2:7:  237. 

3  Jonge,  Opk.,  12:160;  Veth,  Java,  2:237,  quoting  Hogendorp's 
Bericht.  In  1782  ttie  price  paid  the  natives  for  tlieir  coffee  was  little  over 
one-tenth  that  which  had  been  paid  in  the  early  part  of  the  century. 
The  Governor  General  excused  the  policy  on  the  ground  of  a  scarcity  of 
money  and  a  surplus  of  coffee.     Opk.,  12  :  33. 


II  THE    EAST    INDIA   COMPANY  :   POLICY  69 

product,  requiring  to  be  put  through  machine  processes 
before  it  was  fit  for  market.  It  was  manifestly  impos- 
sible for  the  government  to  impose  deliveries  of  sugar  on 
the  native  regents  ;  Chinese  were  the  only  Orientals  com- 
petent to  direct  the  production,  and  the  Chinese  were  out- 
side of  the  native  political  organization.  The  way  in  which 
this  difficulty  was  met  appears  from  a  sugar  contract  of 
1707.1  There  were  three  parties  to  this  contract — ^the 
Dutch  government,  the  Chinaman,  who  promised  to  sell  his 
product  to  none  but  the  government,  and  a  native  official, 
who  ceded  to  the  Chinaman  for  a  certain  time  the  land  for 
the  culture,  and  agreed  to  use  his  influence  to  secure  the 
necessary  labor.  The  government  controlled  the  culture 
by  making  advances  to  the  Chinamen  for  their  outfit,  and 
by  using  its  political  power  to  get  for  them  the  land, 
labor,  and  supplies  that  they  needed.^ 

During  the  early  part  of  the  eighteenth  century  there 
was  a  great  fall  in  the  price  of  sugar  in  Europe,  and  the 
directors  of  the  Company  thought  it  necessary,  as  in  the 
case  of  the  coffee  culture,  to  restrict  production  and  to 
lower  the  price  paid  for  the  product.  The  Company  had 
money  invested  in  many  of  the  mills,  and  therefore  could 
not,  as  in  the  coffee  culture,  proceed  by  the  simple  method 
of  extirpation.  It  did,  however,  in  many  regulations 
extending  through  the  eighteenth  century,  forbid  the 
establishment  of  new  mills,  and  even  their  transfer  from 
one  part  to  another  of  the  island.^     On  the  other  hand, 

iDe  Jonge,  Opk. ,  8  :  324  ff . 

2  See  for  these  points  and  other  details  N.  P.  van  den  Berg,  "De 
Suikerindustrie  op  .Java  onder  het  bestuur  van  de  Oost  Indische  Com- 
pagnie,"  De  Economist,  1892,  2  :  495-519,  012-635. 

3  These  regulations  v?ent  into  minute  details  about  the  local  distribu- 
tion of  the  mills,  as  seen  in  MossePs  proposal,  1750.     In  1711  the  Indian 


70  THE   DUTCH   IN   JAVA  chap 

it  maintained  a  monopoly  of  the  sugar  trade  that  en- 
abled it  any  time  to  break  the  prices  it  paid  to  the 
producer. 

The  investigator  on  whose  work  any  one  must  now  rely 
who  attempts  to  describe  the  course  of  the  Company's 
finances,  prefaces  his  liistory  w^ith  the  statement  that  it  is 
impossible  to  give  a  clear  summary  of  the  Company's 
financial  development. ^  No  one,  not  even  the  most  fa- 
vored of  its  contemporaries,  knew  just  how  the  Company 
stood  at  any  given  time.  A  double  set  of  books  was 
X  kept,  in  which  the  business  done  in  India  and  in  Europe 
was  accounted  for  separately,  and  a  real  balance  was  never 
drawn.  The  books  were  kept  jealously  guarded  from 
the  public,  and  seem  sometimes  to  have  been  kept  secret 
from  the  directors  themselves.  Accounts  were  published 
occasionally  to  satisfy  the  terms  of  the  charter,  but  they 
gave  no  idea  of  the  Company's  actual  condition.  The 
only  way  in  which  the  general  public  could  estimate  that 
was  through  the  dividends  declared,  and  the  dividends 
themselves  formed  no  criterion  by  which  to  judge  of  the 
Company's  prosperity.  The  accounts  which  have  been 
preserved  show  that  from  an  early  period  in  the  Com- 
pany's histor}^  its  dividends  stood  in  no  relation  whatever 
to  its  profits.  Sometimes  no  dividends  were  declared  in 
years  when  the  Company  had  made  money  ;  more  fre- 
quently dividends  were  declared  in  the  years  when  the 

governmeut  established  a  tax  to  protect  the  mills  arouud  Batavia  from  the 
competition  of  the  rest  of  Java  ;  the  directors  abolished  this.  Even  in 
1798  the  government  was  opposed  to  allowing  sugar  mills  to  be  erected 
freely.     Governor  General  Overstraten  to  Directors,  Opk.,  12  :  453. 

1  K.  de  Reus,  NOC,  181.  I  must  refer  to  this  work  for  all  details. 
Not  the  least  interesting  part  of  the  book  is  its  appendices,  giving  in 
tabular  form  certain  aspects  of  the  Company's  fiscal  development. 


II  THE   EAST   INDIA   COMPANY:    POLICY  71 

Company  lost  money.  The  tendency  was  to  declare  a 
dividend  every  year,  and  most  of  the  two  hundred  years 
of  the  Company's  existence  were  marked  by  the  division 
among  the  stockholders  of  sums  ranging  from  12^  per 
cent  to  20,  30,  40,  or  50  per  cent  of  the  capital  stock. ^ 

When  there  were  no  profits,  dividends  were  disbursed 
with  money  borrowed  for  the  purpose ;  this  came  to  be  the 
regular  course  of  action  in  the  later  period  of  the  Com- 
pany,  until  the  declaration  of  the  last  dividend  in  1782. 
The  Indian  accounts  show  constant  losses  from  1693  on, 
and  the  home  accounts  were  always  unfavorable  after 
1736.  The  Company  lived  through  most  of  the  eighteenth 
century  on  credit,  and  one  of  the  most  astonishing  fea- 
tures of  its  history  is  the  fact  that  its  credit  remained  good 
almost  to  the  last.  Verelst,  successor  of  Clive  as  Chair- 
man of  the  Select  Committee,  wrote  home  from  India  in 
1768,  when  the  Company  had  long  been  hopelessly  insol- 
vent, that  the  extent  of  the  credit  of  the  Dutch  exceeded 
all  conception ;  their  bills  drawn  to  an  enormous  amount 
in  Europe  on  Bengal  and  Madras  were  solicited  as  favors.^ 
Even  in  1781  shares  of  the  Company  sold  for  over  two  hun- 
dred. It  must  be  that  not  only  the  affairs  of  the  Company 
were  kept  secret,  but  that  the  public  was  systematically  de- 
ceived. Klerk  de  Reus  shows  that  the  directors  falsified 
accounts  sent  them  from  India,  and  some  of  the  Indian 


1  See  the  list  in  De  Reus,  Beilage  VI.  The  claim  of  Hooft  iu  the  States 
General,  1825-1826  (De  Waal,  NISG.,  1 :  215),  that  the  East  India  Com- 
pany divided  annually  19%,  taking  the  mean  of  the  years  1602-1796,  is  not 
far  from  the  truth  ;  Reus  computes  total  dividends  of  over  3600%  or.  over 
18%  a  year  (NOC,  181).  Van  Alphen's  estimate  in  the  same  session,  that 
the  Company  divided  total  profits  of  2,000,000,000  gulden,  is  an  evident 
exaggeration.     Waal,  NISG.,  1  :  223. 

2  Mill,  HBI.,  3:  448  note. 


72  THE   DUTCH   IN   JAVA  chap. 

accounts  of  the  later  period  appear  pretty  clearly  to  be 
fabrications  themselves. ^ 

Before  taking  up  the  causes  of  the  Company's  decline, 
it  seems  advisable  to  warn  the  reader  that  this  book  is  a 
study  only  of  the  history  of  the  Dutch  in  Java,  and  that 
the  author  has  made  no  attempt  to  follow  the  ventures  of 
the  Dutch  East  India  Company  in  other  islands  or  on  the 
continent  of  Asia.  The  Company  drew  its  revenue  from 
many  sources,  and  the  decline  of  the  Company  evidently 
cannot  be  explained  satisfactorily  by  describing  merely 
the  course  of  its  fortunes  in  Java.  Still,  if  this  be  con- 
fessed, and  the  reader  be  thereby  put  on  his  guard,  some 
discussion  of  the  causes  of  the  Company's  decline  will  be 
of  use,  even  if  it  rests  on  but  part  of  the  evidence  and  can 
pretend  to  lead  to  no  certain  conclusions. 

So  far  as  regards  the  position  of  the  Company  in  Java, 
it  will  be  remembered  that  its  revenues  were  of  two  dis- 
tinct kinds,  answering  to  its  double  functions  of  trader 
and  ruler.  Some  of  the  wares  that  it  sold  in  Europe  it 
had  bought  with  other  goods ;  the  profits  in  this  sort  of 
transaction  depended  on  its  buying  cheap  and  selling  dear. 
It  made  money  if  the  proceeds  of  its  sales  exceeded  the 
cost  of  the  goods  exchanged  and  the  necessary  expense  of 
maintaining  a  commercial  establishment.  On  the  other 
hand,  it  received  other  wares  in  the  way  of  tribute  to  its 
political  supremacy ;  the  amount  that  it  had  to  give  in 
direct  exchange  for  these  wares  was  small,  and  it  made 
money  if  by  their  sale  it  got  an  excess  over  that  small 
amount  and  over  the  costs  of  maintaining  the  political 
and  military  establishment  that  assured  its  supremacy. 

The  fiscal  history  of  the  Company  can  be  roughly  sum- 
1  Cf.  De  Jonge,  Opk.,  11  :  390,  502  ;  12  :  451. 


11  THE    EAST   INDIA   COMPAQ' 1':    POLICY  73 

marized  by  saying  that  in  its  early  period,  when  it  was 
more  trader  than  ruler,  it  made  money  on  the  whole ;  that  in 
its  later  period,  when  it  was  more  ruler  than  trader,  it  lost. 

There  is  a  temptation  to  argue  from  this  that  the  Com- 
pany was  ruined  by  a  change  of  policy,^  or,  if  not  that, 
'that  it  grew  weaker  internally  and  owed  its  fall  to  a  cor- 
ruption of  its  administration.  I  believe  that  neither  of 
these  hypotheses  is  true,  but  that  the  Company  was  inef- 
ficient both  in  respect  to  trade  and  government  from  its 
very  beginning.  It  enjoyed,  however,  exceptionally  good 
luck  when  it  began  its  career ;  it  found  its  rivals  in  the 
East  so  weak  that  it  was  able  by  crude  measures  to  secure 
a  monopoly  of  the  trade,  and  it  sold  its  products  for  very 
high  prices  in  the  European  market.  Prices  fell  as  time 
went  on  and  rivals  grew  stronger ;  then  first  the  weak- 
nesses grew  apparent,  and  it  was  forced  by  competition 
from  the  field  of  trade  to  the  field  of  government  where 
it  could  protect  itself  for  a  time.  There  can  be  no  doubt 
that  the  extension  by  the  Dutch  of  their  political  influ- 
ence in  Java  was  due  to  the  fact  that  they  were  unable 
longer  to  make  money  by  buying  goods  in  the  open 
market,  and  were  forced  to  get  them  in  a  way  which  for 
a  time  proved  cheaper.  The  whole  subject  will  be  made 
clearer  by  a  review  of  some  features  of  the  Company's 
fiscal  development. 

The  seventeenth  century  was  by  no  means  a  period  of 

^  This  is  the  view  taken  by  Muntinghe,  Report,  1817,  S.  van  Deventer, 
LS.,  1 :  295.  The  first  deficit  of  the  Indian  finances  appeared,  he  says,  in 
1693,  just  when  the  Company  had  completed  its  conquests  (?).  "From 
the  moment  that  the  merchant  becomes  prince  and  king,  the  losses  of  the 
merchant  must  be  dated;"  these  losses  were  so  regular  that  they  must 
be  ascribed  to  a  permanent  cause  (expenses  of  government),  not  to  the 
chances  of  commerce. 


74  THE  DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

unmixed  prosperity.  The  accounts  for  the  early  part  of 
it  are  lacking,  and  the  criticisms  of  the  Company  made 
at  that  time  in  the  Netherlands  were  biassed  and  are  per- 
haps untrustworthy.-'  We  have,  however,  at  the  end  of 
the  first  quarter  century  of  the  Company's  existence,  an 
exposure  of  its  condition  by  Coen,  which  shows  that  for 
a  number  of  years  it  had  been  running  behind. ^  The 
causes  were  the  same  which  constantly  reappear  after- 
ward, the  failure  to  make  enough  out  of  trade  to  cover 
the  expense  of  the  commercial  and  military  establish- 
ment.^ The  figures  given  by  Klerk  de  Reus,  beginning 
in  1639,  show  profits  in  India,  but  apparently  this  favor- 
able change  had  occurred  only  a  little  while  before.* 

From  then  until  1693  the  years  in  which  losses  are 
recorded  are  exceptional ;  this  is  the  only  really  prosper- 
ous period  in  the  history  of  the  Company.^     Before  the 


-As  an  example  of  one  of  these  see  Le  Maire's  "Remonstrance," 
1609,  Opk.,  3:369. 

2  See  Coen's  report  in  De  Jonge,  Opk.,  4:276  ff.,  and  his  "  Advys, 
Vertoogh,  and  Poincten  v.  Reg."  (Stukken,  67,  116,  131). 

8  Coen  wrote  in  1623  (Stukken,  120)  that  the  ships,  factories,  and  peo- 
ple employed  by  the  Company  in  the  cloth  trade  cost  more  than  the  profits 
on  the  cloth.  A  large  part  of  the  Company's  means  had  been  used  to 
secure  possession  of  the  Spice  Islands  (ib.,  112).  As  early  as  1614  Sir 
Thomas  Roe,  Ambassador  to  the  Mogul  court,  advised  the  English  to 
avoid  a  territorial  establishment  which  would  consume  their  profits  ;  he 
instanced  the  Dutch,  "  their  dead  pay  consumes  all  the  gain."  Mill,  HBI., 
1:33. 

*  See  Governor  General  Brouwer  to  Directors,  1636  ;  Opk.,  5  :  221.  He 
said  that  in  the  period  1613  to  1632  the  excess  of  gains  over  losses  had 
been  only  300,000  gulden  ;  in  the  three  years  following  1633  the  net 
gains  averaged  over  1,000,000  gulden  a  year.  De  Reus's  figures,  to  be 
found  in  Beilage  V,  were  taken  from  the  statement  compiled  by  P.  van 
Dam,  but  never  published. 

5  In  the  middle  of  the  century  there  was  a  period  of  depression.  Van 
Goens,  in  his  report  of  1655  ("Vertoocb  wegens  den  presenten  Staet," 


II  THE   EAST  INDIA  COMPANY:   POLICY  75 

end  of  the  seventeenth  century  the  Company's  trade  had 
begun  to  decline,  and  by  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth 
century  it  had  practically  ceased  to  exist  in  Java,  except 
in  so  far  as  it  rested  on  a  political  basis. 

In  1747  we  read  that  the  sales  of  the  Company  in 
Bantam  scarcely  deserved  the  name,  and  that  the  trade 
from  the  Netherlands  to  India  returned  no  profit.^  When 
the  Governor  of  the  northeast  coast  arrived  at  his  post 
in  1754,  he  found  his  warehouses  full  of  manufactures, 
cloth  and  other  goods,  which  had  long  been  lying  un- 
salable ;  the  Company  did  practically  no  business 
there. 2 

It  is  true  that  the  Dutch  limited  the  market  for  sales 
in  Java  by  getting  so  large  a  part  of  their  products  on 
the  contingent  system,  but  during  the  time  when  their 
trade  in  the  island  was  declining",  their  commercial  rivals 
were  still  able  to  find  a  ready  market  for  the  wares  that 
they   smuggled   in.       Commercial   competition   must    be 

.  .  .  Bijd.  TLV.,  1856,  1  : 4  :  141  ft.),  said  that  the  condition  of  the  Com- 
pany had  declined  for  some  years  ;  "  All  the  Indian  factories  are  burdened 
with  one  or  another  difficulty,"  war,  losses  without  gains,  business  with- 
out profit,  decline  of  trade,  lack  of  capital,  losses  at  sea. 

1  Rapport  of  Mossel,  1747,  Opk.,  10: 122.  "Extract  uit  een  Secreet 
Besoigne,"  ib.,  p.  131. 

Mossel,  in  his  Memoir,  1753  (Opk.,  10:216  ff.),  shows  that  the  Com- 
pany had  been  unable,  with  all  its  expedients,  to  make  anywhere  near 
enough  commercial  profit  at  Batavia  during  the  last  fifty  years  to  meet  the 
expenses  of  the  establishment. 

2  Memorie  of  Hartinghe,  Opk.,  10  :  359.  A  later  governor  of  the  same 
district  asserted  (Van  der  Burgh,  Memorie,  1780,  Opk.,  11  :  479)  that  he 
made  the  Company's  trade  profitable,  but  his  report  seems  not  to  deserve 
credence  ;  a  successor  said  that  the  Company's  trade  there  had  never  been 
important  and  then  amounted  to  nothing  (Memorie  of  Niepoort,  1784, 
Opk.,  12  :62).  The  same  account  is  given  from  other  parts  of  Java,  as 
Cheribon  ;  no  business  was  done  there.  Memorie  of  Hassalaer,  1766, 
Opk.,  11  :  42. 


76  THE   DUTCH   IN   JAVA  chap. 

given  as  the  chief  cause  of  the  decline  of  the  Company's 
trade  in  the  eighteenth  century. i 

The  monopoly  for  which  the  Company  fought  so  bit- 
terly was  never  perfect.  It  was  sufficient  to  stifle  any 
great  enterprise  on  the  part  of  the  Dutch  citizens  in  Java, 
and  prevent  the  growth  of  a  really  free  trade,  but  it  still 
allowed  enough  competition  to  menace  the  Company's 
trade  in  the  seventeenth  century  and  to  destroy  it  in  the 
eighteenth.  The  Governor  General  wrote,  in  1G60,  that 
there  was  scarcely  hope  for  recovery  from  the  depression 
ruling  then  in  the  trade  in  piece-goods  if  the  English  and 
Arabs  continued  to  compete  ;  they  glutted  the  market 
with  piece-goods  everywhere,  and  sold  so  low  that  there 
was  no  profit  in  the  trade. ^  Foreign  merchants  who  were 
excluded  from  entrance  to  the  Dutch  harbors  in  Java  got 
a  footing  in  an  independent  state  like  Bantam,  and  from 
there  distributed  their  wares  throughout  the  island.  Even 
in  the  public  market  in  Batavia  more  foreign  cloth  than 
Company's  cloth  was  seen  and  sold  daily. ^ 

The  English  were  driven  out  of  Bantam,  and  out  of 
other  posts  that  they  occupied   in   the   archipelago,  but 

1  M.  L.  van  Deventer,  who  is  inclined  to  a  more  favorable  estimate  of 
the  Company's  trade  than  I  can  take,  thinks  that  the  decline  of  its  cloth 
trade  was  due  in  part  to  the  fact  that  the  natives  tended  to  make  more 
cloth  for  themselves.  This  is  the  reason  given  by  Maetsuyker,  1659  (Opk., 
6  :  83),  but  does  not  explain  why  the  English  extended  their  trade  in  cloth 
at  this  very  period.  It  may  be  that  the  Dutch  forced  the  natives  into  the 
cloth  manufacture  by  selling  so  dear. 

2  Maetsuyker  to  Directors,  1660,  Opk.,  6  :  88. 

3  Directors  to  Governor  General,  1676,  Opk.  6  :  157.  Maetsuyker  asked 
(1675,  Opk.,  6  :  129),  in  view  of  the  way  in  which  the  Company  was  being 
undersold  through  smuggling,  whether  it  would  not  be  better  to  admit 
the  foreign  merchants  at  Batavia,  get  the  duties  on  their  trade,  and 
build  up  a  great  commercial  city  there.  The  directors  returned  a  vigor- 
ous negative  ;  the  monopoly  was  to  be  strictly  upheld. 


11  THE  EAST   INDIA   COMPANY:   POLICY  77 

the  attractions  of  the  trade,  the  weakness  of  the  Dutch 
commercial  competition,  and  the  corruption  of  the  Dutch 
administration,  made  their  return  inevitable.  English, 
French,  and  Danes  shared  in  the  trade  that  the  Dutch 
claimed  as  their  exclusive  possession,  and  the  competition 
of  the  first  two  nations  named  was  the  more  formidable  as 
their  trade  was  conducted  in  part  by  individual  entrepre- 
neurs.^ In  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century  the 
Dutch  were  being  undersold  in  their  own  market,^  and  as 
the  English  increased  their  power  on  the  continent  of 
India  they  extended  their  commercial  intrusion  in  the 
islands.^  Before  the  end  of  the  century  the  Dutch  were 
forced  to  admit  that  their  attempt  at  monopoly  was  a 
failure.^ 

All  of  the  commercial  and  industrial  undertakings  in 
which  the  Dutch  East  India  Company  embarked  showed 
the  debilitating  effect  of  corporate  management.  They 
were  moulded  into  a  complicated  routine  in  which  the 
action  of  individual  foresight  and   energy  disappeared.^ 

1  Mill  (HBI.,  1  :  88)  says  that  the  Dutch  were  dismayed  in  1655  at  the 
rumor  that  Cromwell  was  about  to  dissolve  the  London  East  India  Com- 
pany and  allow  free  trade  ;  they  expected  the  keener  competition  to  ruin 
them.  2  opk.,  10:359, 

8  H.  T.  Colenbrander,  "Frankrijk  en  de  Oost  Indische  Compagnie  in 
de  Patriottenjaren,"  De  Gids,  1899,  1 :  454,  456.  In  1775  the  Dutch  com- 
plained that  they  could  scarcely  get  a  cargo  in  India,  the  source  of  supply 
of  much  of  the  piece-goods,  because  of  the  English  influence.  Opk., 
11 ;  275  ff.  *  Cf.  Keport  of  Commissioners  General,  Opk.,  12  :  349. 

^  Van  Rees,  KP.,  288  ff.,  has  an  interesting  discxission  of  the  weakness 
of  the  Company  in  competing  with  individuals  ;  he  cites  the  staple  regula- 
tions as  especially  oppressive.  An  example  of  the  way  in  which  the 
Company  lost  money  by  failing  to  suit  its  action  to  the  needs  of  the  mar- 
ket can  be  found  in  Leupe,  "  Invoering  d.  koffij,"  Bijd.  TLV.,  1858, 
2  :  2  :  60  ;  the  directors  estimated  that  they  lost  a  third  of  a  million  gulden 
because  the  Indian  government  could  not  (it  said)  find  ship  room  for 
coffee  which  they  had  ordered. 


78  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

The  Company,  however,  was  unable  to  compete  not  only 
with  individuals  but  also  with  other  companies  of  the  same 
general  character;  it  must  have  been  an  unusually  bad 
specimen  even  of  its  kind.  Some  light  will  be  thrown  on 
its  inefficiency  in  discussing  the  abuses  of  its  administra- 
tion in  the  next  chapter. 

The  Company  failed  in  the  carrying  trade  as  well  as 
in  merchandizing.  In  the  first  part  of  the  eighteenth 
century  over  4  per  cent  of  the  ships  sailing  were  lost  on 
the  voyage  home,  many  of  them,  presumably,  because  they 
were  overladen  with  goods  representing  the  private  ven- 
tures of  the  Company's  officials. ^  Toward  the  close  of 
the  century  ships  were  often  despatched  from  India  out  of 
season  ;  it  led  often  to  the  loss  of  ship  and  cargo,  or  to  an 
untimely  auction  due  to  the  late  arrival.  The  committee 
which  investigated  the  affairs  of  the  Company  before  its 
dissolution  reported  that  if  the  Company  were  to  be  main- 
tained, it  had  no  choice  but  to  give  up  its  navigation  and 
trade  only  in  chartered  ships.  The  expenses  for  repairs 
were  ruinous,  and  this  reform  was  regarded  as  absolutely 
essential.^ 

The  same  ill  success  attended  the  Company  in  the  field 
of  industry.  The  sugar  culture,  in  which  it'invested  large 
amounts  in  the  form  of  advances,  was  seldom  profitable  to 
the  manufacturers  and  was  a  source  of  loss  to  the  Company.^ 


1  Reus,  NOC,  119.  The  ship  in  the  voyage  described  by  Van  Goens 
was  shaky,  "  svvak  van  timmeragie." 

2  Rapport  of  Commissioners  General,  1795,  Opk.,  12  :  337.  This  change 
had  been  made  by  the  London  East  India  Company  some  time  before. 
Mill,  HBL,  3:11. 

3  Wiese,  Opk.,  13  :  73.  In  a  report  of  1810  the  culture  was  called  "an 
intolerable  burden"  to  the  government.  Report  of  Director  General 
Chasse,  Opk.,  13:484. 


II  THE   EAST    INDIA   COMPANY:   POLICY  79 

It  is  not  likely  that  the  Company  was  equally  unfortu- 
nate in  all  branches  of  trade.  The  accounts  for  its  differ- 
ent factories  in  the  East,  so  far  as  they  can  be  trusted  to 
give  a  true  picture  of  affairs,  show  that  it  was  gaining  in 
some  countries,  losing  in  others. ^  In  general  it  seems  to 
have  remained  about  stationary  in  trading  efficiency,  so 
that  more  progressive  rivals  were  constantly  encroaching 
on  one  part  or  another  of  its  field.  We  have  here  the 
reason  for  Mossel's  proposal,  made  in  the  middle  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  that  the  Company,  being  a  "  distin- 
guished" merchant,  ought  to  confine  its  trade  to  dis- 
tinguished wares,  i.e.  those  that  through  some  political 
advantage  or  bit  of  luck  it  could  trade  in  profitably. 

The  decline  of  the  purely  commercial  income  of  the 
Company  in  Java  in  the  eighteenth  century  was  accom- 
panied by  a  rapid  growth  in  its  income  as  a  ruler.  The 
money  taxes  which  it  raised  in  the  form  of  custom  duties, 
tolls  on  markets  and  internal  trade,  poll  taxes,  etc.,  in- 
creased as  it  extended  its  territorial  influence,  and  the  dis- 
guised taxes  of  the  contingent  system  grew  until  the}^ 
formed  the  mainstay  of  its  revenue  in  India. ^     References 


1  Reus,  Beilage  IX.  In  the  period  1680-1757  the  most  favorable  show- 
ing was  made  in  Japan,  Coromandel,  Surat,  and  Persia  trade.  The 
Bengal  trade  was  uncertain,  and  the  Malabar  trade  almost  uniformly- 
unfavorable.  Different  factories  in  Java  showed  constant  losses.  We 
know  too  little,  however,  about  the  way  in  which  the  figures  in  this  table 
were  compiled  to  be  able  to  draw  any  sure  inferences  from  them.  The 
same  can  be  said  of  the  figures  given  by  De  Reus,  pp.  192-193,  and  taken 
by  him  to  show  that  the  profit  of  the  Indian  trade  was  50%  in  the  last 
quarter  of  the  eighteenth  century.  Such  a  result  can  be  reached  only  by 
disregarding  expenses  that  could  properly  be  charged  to  the  trade  account. 

2  It  is  impossible  to  give  the  exact  proportion  which  the  Company's 
revenues  as  trader  and  as  ruler  bore  to  each  other ;  the  two  sources  of 
revenue  are  confused  in  the  accounts  kept  by  the  Company. 


80  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

will  be  made  later  to  the  indications  that  the  political 
revenues  of  the  Company  would  have  sufficed  to  enable  it 
to  maintain  its  position  in  Java  if  they  had  been  hus- 
banded with  decent  care.  In  the  first  half  of  the  eigh- 
teenth century  they  were  offset  by  the  expenses  of  the 
wars  which  the  Company  waged  to  extend  its  political 
power.i  The  Company  had  established  itself  so  firmly  by 
1755  that  it  secured  comparative  freedom  from  troubles 
with  the  natives  thereafter,  and  might  have  enjoyed  a 
period  of  recuperation.  The  resources  of  the  Company 
were,  however,  being  squandered  in  improper  dividends 
and  in  unprofitable  trade,  its  administration  was  unneces- 
sarily costly,  and  the  European  wars  beginning  in  1780 
and  1795  gave  it  the  death  blow.^ 

The  Company's  military  and  naval  power  declined  so 
that  it  became  impossible  to  protect  the  island  from 
pirates.^  In  1778  the  Governor  General  appealed  directly 
to  William  V  of  the  Netherlands  for  soldiers  and  sailors, 
saying  that  appeals  to  the  directors  had  proved  vain.*  To 
secure  the  money  for  running  expenses  the  Governor  Gen- 

1  An  estimate  is  printed  in  De  Jonge,  Opk.,  10  :  277-278,  of  the  financial 
result  of  the  wars  against  Mataraui  up  to  1750  ;  expenses  on  military 
account  were  put  at  8,000,000  gulden  and  the  gains  through  forced  deliv- 
eries, etc.,  at  less  than  7,000,000.  From  1746  to  1758  the  Company  is 
said  to  have  spent  over  4,000,000.     De  Reus,  xxxviii,  note. 

2  For  the  effect  of  European  wars  and  maladministration  in  ruining 
the  Company  see  Colenbrander,  Frankrijk,  De  Gids,  1899,  1  :  458  ;  Mun- 
tinghe's  Minute  in  Raffles,  Sub.,  281 ;  the  discussion  of  Van  der  Parra's 
proposal  to  reform  the  administration,  1763,  Jonge,  Opk.,  10  :  397  ff. ;  and 
Siberg's  statement  of  the  accounts,  1799,  ib.,  13:  8. 

8  Governor  General  Alting  to  Directors,  1791,  Opk.,  12:239.  The 
Resident  of  Tagal  had  fitted  out  a  vessel  against  these  pirates  at  his  own 
expense. 

*  Johge,  Opk.,  11 :  315.  In  1801  the  Company's  navy  in  Java  counted 
only  six  ships.     lb.,  13 :  31. 


n  THE   EAST  INDIA   COMPANY:  POLICY  81 

eral  had  to  give  up  the  old  monopoly  policy  and  sell  goods 
directly  to  foreign  merchants.^  State  commissions  were 
established  to  effect  a  reform,  if  possible,  in  the  Company's 
condition,  but  they  found  their  task  a  hopeless  one.  The 
directors  were  forced  in  1793  to  admit  that  they  had  no 
cash,  and  their  governing  powers  were  taken  away  by  the 
law  of  1795,  which  put  a  State  commission  in  their  place. 
Finally,  in  1798,  the  Company  was  entirely  abolished  ;  its 
debts,  amounting  to  more  than  134,000,000  gulden,  and 
its  sources  of  income,  were  assumed  by  the  State.  Its 
territories  were  henceforth  to  be  ruled  for  the  State  by  a 
Council  of  the  Asiatic  Possessions. 

1  Governor  General  Alting  to  Directors,  1785,  ib.,  12 :  74. 


CHAPTER   III 

THE  EAST  INDIA  COMPANY:    GOVERNMENT 

IN  the  preceding  chapter  I  have  attempted  to  give  some 
idea  of  the  policy  pursued  by  the  Dutch  East  India 
Company  in  Java,  and  the  effect  of  this  policy  on  the 
Company.  Most  of  the  reasons  for  the  course  which 
the  Company  followed  are  to  be  found  in  the  conditions 
that  existed  in  the  native  organization  in  Java.  The  policy 
of  the  Company,  however,  to  some  extent,  and  the  success 
of  the  policy  to  a  very  large  extent,  were  dependent  on 
its  peculiar  organization  and  the  character  of  its  adminis- 
tration. It  will  be  the  purpose  of  this  chapter,  therefore, 
to  discuss  the  organization  and  administration  of  the 
Company  and  to  show  their  influence  on  its  history. 
Another  topic  not  yet  considered  will  be  the  effect  of  the 
Company's  rule  on  the  natives. 

The  essential  features  of  the  Company's  government 
in  the  Netherlands  were  fixed  by  the  charter  of  1602,  and 
remained  substantially  the  same  for  nearly  two  hundred 
years.  In  form  the  Company  was  neither  purely  "  joint- 
stock  "  nor  "regulated,"  but  between  the  two,  with  features 
resembling  modern  forms  of  industrial  combination.  It 
was  organized  from  a  union  of  a  number  of  smaller  com- 
panies, and  the  partial  independence  of  the  companies  was 
recognized  in  the  division  into  provincial  "  Chambers," 
of  which  there  were  six.     In  the  earliest  period,  at  least, 

82 


CHAP.  Ill     THE   EAST   INDIA   COMPANY:    GOVERNMENT  83 

these  Chambers  maintained  a  large  degree  of  independence 
in  the  conduct  of  their  trade.  To  each  Chamber  was 
assigned  a  certain  quota  in  the  trading  operations  of  the 
Company  ;  Amsterdam,  for  instance,  supplied  half  of  the 
ships  and  cargoes  going  to  the  making  of  a  fleet,  while 
the  two  small  Chambers  of  North  Holland  together  sup- 
plied one-eighth.  The  control  and  administration  over 
ships  and  wares  were  vested  in  the  Chamber  which  supplied 
them,  even  though  the  ships  returned  to  another  port  in 
the  Netherlands.  A  provision  of  the  charter  required 
that  a  Chamber  with  a  surplus  of  some  ware,  like  spice, 
of  which  the  other  Chambers  stood  in  need,  should  share 
with  them,  and  each  Chamber  was  required  to  report  regu- 
larly to  the  others  the  results  of  the  trading  operations, 
but  these  provisions  merely  indicate  how  far  removed 
from  the  modern  type  of  trading  corporation  the  Com- 
pany was.  In  certain  matters  of  policy  the  Chambers 
were  subject  to  a  higher  authority,  the  Committee  of 
Seventeen,  whose  powers  will  be  described  immediately. 
In  the  course  of  time  this  committee  extended  its  author- 
ity, and  brought  the  Chambers  into  much  closer  depend- 
ence, but  it  never  reached  the  position  of  the  governing 
board  of  one  great  corporation.  The  powers  of  the 
Chambers  went  so  far,  for  instance,  that  each  not  only 
maintained  a  separate  administration  in  the  Netherlands, 
but  had  also  the  right  to  appoint  officials  for  the  Indian 
service,  a  right  which  the  Committee  of  Seventeen  tried 
to  control  by  various  regulations,  but  which  led  to  many 
abuses  and  to  an  excessive  growth  of  the  Indian  person- 
nel. Each  Chamber  was  governed  by  a  board  of  directors, 
appointed  at  first  by  the  States  General,  with  provisions 
for  the  filling  of  vacancies  which  soon  put  the  control  of 


84  THE   DUTCH   IN  JAVA  chap. 

the  boards  in  the  hands  of  the  municipal  governments  of 
the  Dutch  towns.  Attempts  of  the  stockholders  to  secure 
representation  in  the  boards  proved  fruitless. 

Above  the  boards  of  the  separate  Chambers  was  the 
Committee  of  Seventeen,  established  to  control  the  general 
policy  of  the  Company.  According  to  the  charter  it  was 
to  decide  how  many  ships  were  to  be  sent  out  at  any  time, 
where  they  were  to  go,  and  "  other  things  "  touching  trade ; 
its  decisions  were  to  be  made  known  to  the  Chambers, 
and  to  be  carried  out  through  their  executive  action.  The 
Committee  of  Seventeen  formed  the  real  centre  of  govern- 
ment of  the  East  India  Company.  It  received  and  an- 
swered the  reports  of  the  Indian  administration  until  the 
amount  of  correspondence  rendered  necessary  the  estab- 
lishment of  a  special  commission  for  this  purpose,  and  then 
it  still  retained  control  of  the  general  direction  of  the 
Indian  policy.  It  determined  the  amount  and  character 
of  the  products  to  be  sent  to  India,  and  fixed  the  prices  at 
which  the  wares  sent  in  return  were  to  be  sold.  It  was  the 
common  clearing  house  in  which  the  claims  of  the  differ- 
ent Chambers  on  each  other  were  settled.  This  Committee 
of  Seventeen  was  not  a  permanent  body,  but  was  formed 
afresh  at  every  session  by  the  election  of  delegates  from 
the  boards  of  the  different  Chambers.  The  Chamber  of 
Amsterdam  was  entitled  to  eight  of  the  seventeen  dele- 
gates, a  right  which  amounted  to  a  control  of  the  com- 
mittee, and  did  much  to  preserve  its  power  from  the 
harmful  effect  of  the  mutual  distrust  and  jealousy  of  the 
local  boards. 

The  directors'  positions  soon  fell  into  the  control  of  the 
ruling  city  magistrates'  families,  and  the  directors  formed 
an  inner  ring  in  the  Company  with  a  power  which  their  po- 


Ill  THE   EAST   INDIA   COMPANY:   GOVERNMENT  85 

litical  influence  made  practically  absolute.  They  refused 
to  render  an  account  of  the  Company's  fiscal  status  at  the 
end  of  the  first  ten  years,  as  they  were  bound  to  do  by 
the  terms  of  the  charter,  and  again  refused,  on  various 
pretexts,  at  the  end  of  the  second  ten  years.  Protests  on 
the  part  of  the  stockholders  were  met  with  the  threat  that 
no  dividend  would  be  declared  for  seven  years  unless  they 
kept  still.  The  approaching  expiration  of  the  Company's 
first  charter  led,  in  1622,  to  a  vigorous  attack  from  the 
discontented  elements,  who  demanded  an  accounting 
and  a  voice  in  the  affairs  of  the  Company.  In  form 
concessions  were  made  to  the  opposition  ;  in  fact  the 
directors,  in  alliance  with  the  States  General  and  the 
municipal  governments,  surrendered  nothing.  The  right 
of  the  stockholders  to  a  share  in  the  election  of  directors 
proved  illusory,  and  the  account  books  which  they  were 
to  examine  mysteriously  disappeared. 

If  we  believe  a  small  part  of  the  charges  brought 
against  the  directors  of  this  period  and  never  disproved, 
these  officials  must  have  been  thoroughly  corrupt.  They 
were  accused  of  manipulating  the  price  of  the  stock  by 
declaring  improper  dividends  and  by  giving  out  false 
information  to  help  them  in  their  speculations.  They 
had  proposed  to  invest  a  million  of  the  Company's  money 
in  the  West  India  Company  to  further  their  personal 
interests.  As  private  individuals  they  sold  goods  to 
themselves  as  representatives  of  the  Company,  and  made 
improper  profits  out  of  their  emolument  of  a  percentage 
on  the  costs  of  equipping  the  fleets.  In  this  last  detail 
reforms  were  effected,  first  by  limiting  the  percentage  to 
one  on  the  profits  of  the  return  cargoes,  and  later  by  sub- 
stituting for  it  fixed  salaries.     In  the  general  position  of 


86  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

the  directors  no  change  was  made.^  The  large  dividends 
which  they  declared  made  the  public  quiet  if  not  con- 
tented. The  directors  disregarded  all  attempts  to  force 
them  to  render  an  account  of  the  condition  of  the  Com- 
pany and  took  scrupulous  precautions,  not  only  to  keep 
secret  their  own  deliberations,  but  also  to  prevent  knowl- 
edge of  the  course  of  affairs  in  India  from  reaching  the 
public.  Officials  were  forbidden  to  keep  private  journals 
or  to  make  maps  or  sketches ;  they  could  not  write  letters 
or  give  information  to  any  individual,  even  though  he  were 
a  director  of  the  Company.  All  letters  must  be  opened, 
read,  and  censored  by  the  Company. 

The  Company  soon  attained,  in  its  relations  with  the 
State,  the  same  independence  and  freedom  from  whole- 
some control  that  characterized  its  relations  with  the 
stockholders.  The  first  charter  reserved  nominally  to 
the  States  General  the  right  of  interference,  and  imposed 
on  the  Company  the  duty  of  frequent  reports.  During 
the  early  years  the  Company  and  the  government  main- 
tained a  pretty  close  connection,  but  one  which  was 
marked  by  an  entire  disregard  of  the  public  interests 
in  behalf  of  the  claims  the  directors  put  forward  to  a 
privileged  position.  The  pretext  for  the  suj^port  which 
the  States  General  rendered  the  directors  in  their  Avar 
with  the  stockholders  was  the  public  character  of  the 
Company,  its  services  to  the  State  of  a  commercial, 
military,  and  political  kind;  the  fact  seems  to  be  rather 
that  this  support  was  obtained  through  the  political  and 

1  The  payment  of  salaries  to  dii'ectors  is  not  the  important  turning- 
point  in  the  history  of  the  Company  that  Roscher  and  Jannasch,  Kolonien, 
Leipzig,  1885,  p.  272,  represented  it  as  being.  Saalfeld's  Geschichte,  on 
which  Roscher  largely  relied,  is  corrected  and  amplified  in  many  impor- 
tant points  by  Klerk  de  Reus,  and  has  lost  its  value  as  an  authority. 


Ill  THE   EAST   INDIA   COMPANY:    GOVERNMENT  87 

personal  influence  of  the  directors.  The  government 
passed  a  kiw  taking  the  directors  under  its  "  special  safe- 
guard and  protection,"  and  forbade  the  courts  to  enter- 
tain suits  against  them ;  the  directors  had  only  to  make 
a  request  for  help  against  the  stockholders,  and  the  gov- 
ernment granted  it,  as  in  the  law  prohibiting  the  publfc 
from  speculating  in  the  Company's  stock. 

Before  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth  century  the  Com- 
pany had  outgrown  the  need  of  further  dependence  on 
the  government,  and  maintained  from  then  until  its  fall  a 
position  that  was  practically  sovereign.  The  addition  of 
the  Prince  of  Orange  to  the  directorate  in  the  eighteenth 
century,  with  the  right  of  representation  on  the  Com- 
mittee of  Seventeen,  was  of  no  practical  importance.  In 
recognition  of  the  privileges  granted  it  the  Company  paid 
large  lump  sums  to  the  State  at  the  periodical  renewal 
of  its  charter,  it  shared  prizes  with  the  State,  and  was 
subject  to  certain  general  taxes  and  special  contribu- 
tions ;  these  financial  obligations  comprise  the  sum  of  its 
dependence.  Ustariz,  writing  in  the  first  half  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  ascribed  the  success  of  the  Dutch 
East  India  Company,  which  he  thought  to  be  the  richest 
and  most  powerful  trading  corporation  of  the  time,  to  the 
absolute  sovereignty  which  it  exercised  in  the  manage- 
ment of  its  affairs  at  home  and  abroad. ^ 

Into  the  hands  of  directors,  acting  as  described  through 
their  Committee  of  Seventeen,  freed  from  every  particle 
of  control  on  the  part  of  stockholders  and  government, 
were  intrusted  the  immense  powers  of  the  East  India 
Company.     The  great  commercial  privilege  of  monopoly 

^  "Theorie  et  pratique  du  commerce,"  translation  frOm  the  second 
Spanish  ed.,  Paris,  1753,  p.  115. 


88  THE   DUTCH   IN  JAVA  chap. 

has  already  been  described.  Within  the  field  it  covered, 
extending  from  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope  to  the  Straits 
of  Magellan,  the  Company  was  given  the  right  to  make 
treaties  and  alliances  in  the  name  of  the  States  General,  to 
build  forts,  and  to  maintain  the  necessary  civil,  judicial, 
and  military  establishments.  It  could  take  such  measures 
as  it  thought  best  to  meet  force  or  fraud  on  the  part  of 
the  natives.  All  the  great  powers  of  a  sovereign  State 
were  made  over  to  it,  to  be  exercised  at  its  discretion. 

In  certain  important  points  the  directors  exercised  a 
controlling  influence  on  the  Company's  policy  in  India. 
This  is  most  striking  in  regard  to  the  maintenance  of  the 
policy  of  strict  monopoly.  The  bad  effects  of  this  policy 
and  the  impossibility  of  executing  it  thoroughly  were  so 
evident  in  India  that  the  Governors  General  protested 
again  and  again  against  it,  as  has  been  noted  above. 
There  can  be  no  question  that  the  Indian  government 
would  have  legalized  much  of  the  illicit  trade  and  would 
have  stimulated  the  settlement  of  private  merchants,  if 
their  proposals  and  attempts  at  reform  had  not  been  met 
by  constant  opposition  and  criticism  on  the  part  of  the 
directors.  The  directors  lived  in  a  period  of  European 
history  when  natural  trade  monopolies  and  special  com- 
mercial privileges  were  the  rule.  They  saw  these  monop- 
olies maintained  w^ith  comparative  success  by  the  public 
administration  of  the  day,  and  could  not  understand  why 
similar  success  should  not  attend  their  policy  in  India. 
They  did  not  realize  the  evils  of  their  restrictions,  and 
were  too  short-sighted  to  perceive  the  possible  benefits  of 
change ;  they  set  their  faces  obstinately  against  any  real 
reform,  and  prevented  any,  down  to  the  time  of  the 
Company's  fall. 


m  THE   EAST  INDIA  COMPANY  :   GOVERNMENT  89 

Besides  this  effect  on  economic  policy  must  be  put,  as 
of  nearly  equal  importance,  the  influence  of  the  home 
government  on  the  character  of  the  Indian  administra- 
tion. The  personal  interests  of  the  directors  were  too 
closely  concerned  in  the  appointment  of  Indian  officials 
to  allow  them  ever  to  establish  a  system  of  appointment 
and  promotion  that  would  build  up  a  corps  of  trained 
officials.  Too  many  men  were  sent  out,  and  often  these 
men  were  entirely  unfit  for  the  posts  they  were  to  occupy. 
Through  a  parsimony  that  seemed  to  them  economy,  they 
paid  their  officials  salaries  entirely  unsuited  to  the  condi- 
tions in  which  the  officials  lived  and  the  temptations  to 
illicit  gain  by  which  they  were  surrounded.  Here  again 
the  directors  did  not  lack  representations  from  India  of 
the  true  state  of  affairs,  but  these  fell  unheeded.  No 
help  in  reforming  the  administration  was  granted  from 
home  through  the  period  of  the  Company's  history. i 

Finally,  an  influence  appearing  in  the  points  of  policy 
already  noted  but  extending  beyond  them  and  pervading 
all  parts  of  the  Indian  policy  and  government,  the  directors 
held  up  in  their  own  persons  the  ideal  of  a  selfish  and 
momentary  gain,  at  the  expense  of  whatever  outcome 
to  the  society  which  they  represented.  They  were  in 
their  own  persons  enough  to  prevent  the  growth  of  a 
wholesome  esprit  de  corps  among  their  servants,  and  to 
discourage  far-sighted  plans  of  policy  which  could  be 
carried  out  only  through  temporary  sacrifices  and  through 
united  and  persistent  efforts. 

The  directors  were  almost  absolutely  ignorant  of   the 
geography,  the  commercial   possibilities,  and   the   native 
institutions  of  their  Eastern  possessions  when  they  began 
1  Cf.  Wiese,  Jonge,  Opk.,  13  :  52. 


90  THE  DUTCH   IN  JAVA  chap. 

their  rule.  The  early  instructions  to  the  Governor  Gen- 
eral ^  recognized  the  fact  that  the  directors  must  depend 
on  Indian  officials  to  determine  in  detail  the  course  of 
commercial  and  political  policy.  Even  well  into  the 
nineteenth  century  this  ignorance  of  conditions  in  the 
East  characterized  those  at  home  who  were  supposed  to 
control  the  Eastern  policy,  and  led  to  the  same  result, 
the  decision  by  the  Indian  officials  of  most  of  the  ques- 
tions that  they  had  to  face.  The  colonial  history  of  the 
Dutch  was  made  in  Java,  not  at  home.  The  most  impor- 
tant feature  in  the  development  of  Dutch  policy,  that  by 
which  the  Company  was  diverted  from  commerce  to  war 
and  government,  was  effected,  as  has  been  stated  above, 
not  only  without  directions  from  home  but  against  the 
active  protests  of  the  directors.  The  language  used  by 
the  Governor  General  to  the  directors  in  the  early  and 
formative  period  of  the  Company's  policy  is  remarkable 
for  the  outspoken  way  in  which  the  directors  were  criti- 
cised for  what  was  regarded  as  mischievous  interference 
on  their  part.  Coen  wrote  to  them  in  1619,2  "I  swear 
to  you  by  the  Almighty  that  the  Company  has  no  enemies 
who  do  so  much  to  hurt  and  hinder  it,  as  the  ignorance 
and  thoughtlessness  (do  not  take  it  ill  of  me)  which 
obtains  among  Your  Honors,  and  silences  the  voice  of 
the  reasonable."  A  score  of  years  later  Governor  General 
van  Diemen  answered  a  criticism  of  his  policy  by  the  fol- 
lowing :  "  We  have  said,  and  we  repeat,  that  affairs  in 
India  must  be  left  to  us,  and  that  we  cannot  await  orders 
about  them  if  we  are  to  do  the  Company's  service.     Your 

1  Cf.  Mijer,  Verzam.,  Instr.  voor  Both,  art.  8,  p.  7,  art.  21,  p.  13  ;  "  In- 
struktie  voor  Geraerdt  Reijnst,"  Tijd.  TLV.,  1853,  vol.  I,  art,  8  ff.,  p.  132, 
art.  20,  p.  141.  ^  Opk.,  4 :  133.     I  translate  freely. 


Ill  THE   EAST   INDIA   COMPANY:    GOVERNMENT  91 

Honors  know  the  reason,  namely  that  the  times  will  not 
suffer  it.'"^  The  Governors  General  of  the  later  period 
were  generally  of  less  force  than  those  two  whom  I  have 
cited,  and  on  that  account  would  be  less  apt  to  assume  a 
similar  attitude  of  independence  in  their  official  commu- 
nications, but  they  had,  too,  no  occasion  to  claim  what 
had  been  tacitly  granted  to  them.  The  reports  made  to 
the  directors  by  the  Governor  General  in  the  eighteenth 
century  are  very  full  as  a  rule,  but  they  tell  what  the  gov- 
ernment has  already  done  and  do  not  ask  what  it  may  do. 
The  replies  from  the  Netherlands  review  the  subject  of 
the  reports  and  give  in  reference  to  them  the  opinion 
of  the  directors,  more  or  less  grounded,  but  they  seldom 
disallow  or  positively  direct  any  action,  unless  it  be  in 
connection  with  the  monopoly  or  the  expenditure  of 
money.  The  whole  burden  of  their  letters  is :  make 
more  money  for  us,  in  whatever  way  you  can. 

In  India,  therefore,  is  to  be  sought  that  part  of  the 
government  of  the  East  India  Company  that  was  most 
influential  in  directing  policy,  and  India  was  the  seat  of 
the  administration,  on  whose  efficiency  the  final  success 
of  any  policy  must  depend.  At  the  head  of  the  Indian 
government  was  the  Governor  General.  I  have  already 
referred  to  the  conditions  which  made  necessary  the 
appointment  of  such  an  official.     It  is  sufficient  here  to 

1 1641.  Jonge,  Opk.,  5  :  24n.  Schiff,  Kol.  op  Java,  Tijd.  TLV.,  1869, 
p.  124,  notes  that  the  directors  made  Coen,  Van  Diemen,  and  Maetsuyker 
Governors  General,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  they  all  were  known  to  be 
opposed  to  the  monopoly  features  of  the  Company's  policy.  He  thinks  it 
was  due  to  the  fact  that  the  directors  always  regarded  the  Company's 
system  of  monopoly  as  abnormal,  and  that  they  were  feeling  for  a  change. 
It  is  hard  to  believe  this  in  view  of  the  attitude  which  the  directors  took 
toward  attempts  to  reform  the  monopoly  ;  they  would  suffer  anything 
from  a  Governor  General  but  an  attack  on  that. 


92  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

notice  that  according  to  the  original  theory  he  was  sim- 
ply to  be  the  president  of  a  council  which  was  to  be  the 
real  governing  body,  but  that  the  whole  tendency  of  the 
situation  of  the  Dutch  in  Java  was  to  bring  about  a  mon- 
archical form  of  government,  and  the  Governor  General 
soon  obtained  a  position  above  his  councillors.  Valentijn 
could  write  of  him  early  in  the  eighteenth  century,  "  the 
power  of  this  lord  comes  very  close  to  that  of  a  king  or 
the  monarch  of  an  empire."  It  would  be  easy  to  make  out 
a  list  of  his  functions  from  the  last  Instructions,  those  of 
1650,  but  to  do  this  would  obscure  the  fact  that  the  Gov- 
ernor General  was  practically  limited  in  his  powers  only 
by  the  difficulty  of  executing  them  at  any  distance,  and 
the  danger  of  being  recalled.  The  directors  attempted 
sometimes  to  control  the  Governor  General  by  special 
commissioners  whom  they  sent  out,  but  in  general  he 
could  manage  to  do  as  he  pleased. 

The  council  varied  considerably  in  its  composition  and 
its  members  from  time  to  time.  For  a  considerable  period 
it  retained  some  important  powers,  among  them  the  right 
of  electing  a  successor  to  the  Governor  General  in  the 
event  of  his  death,  and  until  the  directors  should  signify 
their  pleasure.  The  practical  influence  of  the  Council 
declined,  however,  very  rapidly.  It  can  be  measured 
by  the  fact  that  a  Governor  General,  who  owed  his  elec- 
tion to  it  (Camphuijs,  1684-1691),  on  the  occasion  of  a 
conflict  as  to  the  right  to  appoint  a  subordinate  official, 
simply  bade  the  councillors  good  day,  and  ruled  for  two 
years  entirely  without   them.^     The  councillors  were  in 

1  Kalff,  "Van  Ambachtsman  tot  Gouverneur-Generaal,"  Ind.  Gids,  1894, 
1  :  334.  It  is  said  that  Campbuijs  got  his  position  because  lie  was  the 
most  unpopular  member  of  the  Council,  and  the  least  likely  candidate. 


Ill  THE   EAST   INDIA   COMPANY:   GOVERNMENT  93 

general  creatures  of  the  Governor  General,  employed  in 
executive  business  at  Batavia,  or  sometimes  sent  out  as 
governors  of  outlying  islands.  Under  Governor  and 
Council  were  naturally  a  great  number  of  subordinate 
officials  for  the  different  branches  of  the  service,  many 
of  them  with  functions  that  were  at  first  purely  commer- 
cial, as  is  indicated  by  the  titles,  upper-merchant,  mer- 
chant, under-merchant,  book-keeper,  clerk. 

It  is  hard  to  disassociate  the  office  from  the  man  who 
holds  it,  and  to  criticise  the  scheme  of  administration 
without  touching  on  the  character  of  officials.  So  far  as 
practicable,  however,  I  shall  reserve  the  criticism  of  the 
personnel  of  the  Indian  administration  for  discussion  later, 
and  speak  here  of  evils  arising  partly  at  least  from  faults 
in  the  scheme  of  organization  itself.  The  great  powers 
vested  in  the  Governor  General  were  probably  necessary 
for  the  efficient  conduct  of  government,  but  they  made 
the  office  more  important  than  the  Dutch  could  afford  to 
have  it.  The  Governor  General  held  office,  in  the  period 
of  the  Company,  for  a  term  that  would  average  less  than 
six  years  ;  the  frequent  changes  led  to  vacillations  in  the 
policy  pursued,  and  there  was  always  the  danger  that  a 
weak  man  would  get  the  place  and  undo  the  work  of  his 
predecessors.^  On  the  other  hand  the  powers  of  the 
Governor  General  were  in  one  way  not  great  enough. 
The  government  of  the  northeast  coast,  including  in 
the  eighteenth  century  all  central  and  eastern  Java,  and 


The  other  councillors  were  suspicious  of  each  other's  ambitions,  and 
enough  voted  for  him  to  give  him  the  place.  He  had  been  confirmed  by 
the  Seventeen  before  the  incident  referred  to  in  the  text.  Cf.  Meinsma, 
1  :  105. 

1  Cf.  M.  L.  van  Deventer,  Gesch.,  1  :  197. 


94  THE  DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chai». 

comprising  thirty-six  regencies,  was  intrusted  to  a  gov- 
ernor who  was  a  more  important  official  in  the  eyes  of  most 
of  the  natives  than  the  Governor  General  himself.  Subject 
in  theory  to  the  Governor  General,  and  reporting  to  him, 
he  took  on  occasion  the  position  of  an  independent  ruler, 
and  it  was  difficult  for  either  Governor  General  or  direc- 
tors to  hold  him  to  account. ^ 

The  conflicts  which  mark  the  history  of  the  Indian 
administration  were  not  peculiar  to  Dutch  India  ;  still 
they  must  be  ascribed  in  part  at  least  to  imperfections  in 
the  distribution  of  authority  there.  Early  instructions  re- 
fer to  the  "harmful  jealousies  and  dangerous  contentions  " 
which  the  home  government  never  could  prevent.  The 
arrangement  by  which  the  Council  filled  a  vacancy  in  the 
governor-generalship  seems  to  have  tended  naturally  to 
intrigues  and  quarrels.^  There  was  frequent  strife  between 
the  Governor  General  and  the  Director  General,  who  was 
in  especial  charge  of  commercial  operations,  and  the  line 


1  M.  L.  van  Deventer,  Gesch.,  2  :  229,  281  ;  Jonge,  Opk.,  12  :  xvi ;  13  : 
cix  (introductions  by  Deventer)  ;  Vetli,  Java,  2  :330  ;  P.  J.  Mijer,  "Mr, 
Pieter  Gerardus  van  Overstraten,"  TNI.,  1840,  3:1:  208. 

2  After  the  death  of  Governor  General  van  Diemen,  in  1645,  the  jeal- 
ousies in  the  Council  brought  a  series  of  charges  and  counter-charges  to 
the  attention  of  the  directors,  and  incited  the  Director  General  van  der 
Lijn  to  flog  the  Councillor  of  India  Sweers  and  his  mistress  in  Sweers's 
house.  See  Jonge,  Opk.,  5:267ff.;  Leupe,  "  S.  Svyeers,"  Bijd.  TLV., 
1873,  3:8:  40.  Both  Van  der  Lijn  and  Sweers  were  thieves,  it  is  said.  In 
the  eighteenth  century  Valckenier,  the  worst  of  the  whole  line  of  Gov- 
ernors General,  arrested  and  packed  off  to  the  Netherlands  three  of  his 
councillors  whom  he  suspected  of  plotting  against  him.  One  of  the  three 
was  appointed  Governor  General  by  the  directors  before  they  had  heard 
of  the  trouble.  See  Leupe,  in  Bijd.  TLV.,  1858,  2:2:361-370.  A 
letter  of  Valckenier  defending  himself  (in  Opk.,  9:341  ff.)  is  a  most 
remarkable  literary  specimen ;  it  is  divided,  without  rhyme  or  reason, 
into  1120  sections. 


Ill  THE   EAST   INDIA   COMPANY:    GOVERNMENT  95 

between  the  executive  and  judicial  authority  was  so 
vague  that  conflict  was  inevitable. ^ 

A  danger  still  greater  than  conflicts  between  officials 
was  that  of  too  close  alliance  between  them.  Two  cases 
in  which  the  families  of  the  Governor  General  and  the 
Director  General  were  united  by  marriage  relations  led  to 
such  results  that  the  directors  voted  that  no  relationship 
of  first  or  second  degree  might  exist  between  these 
important  officials.  In  the  period  just  before  the  fall  of 
the  Company  Java  was  governed  for  nearly  twenty  years 
by  a  ring  of  officials,  united  by  self-interest  and  family 
alliances. 2 

It  would  be  unreasonable  to  expect  in  the  time  and 
place  of  the  East  India  Company's  rule  such  a  good  admin- 
istration as  is  found  in  a  modern  state,  but  the  weakness 
and  corruption  natural  to  an  early  Indian  administration 
were  aggravated  many  fold,  unnecessarily,  by  the  refusal 
of  the  direction  to  allow  proper  salaries.  From  the  be- 
ginning of  the  Dutch  rule  in  India  the  directors  showed  a 
nervous  anxiety  to  prevent  their  commercial  profits  from 
being  eaten  up  by  the  expenses  of  administration,  and 
thought  to  reach  their  end  by  setting  low  salaries  and  resist- 
ing all  requests  to  raise  them.^  The  Governor  General, 
who  ruled  with  an  authority  unknown  to  a  Dutch  prince 
over  an  empire  that  made  the  Netherlands  seem  insignifi- 
cant in  comparison,  was  given,  to  support  his  state,  a  salary 

1  De  Reus,  NOC,  97.  N.  P.  van  den  Berg,  "  Een  Conflict  tusschen  de 
regeering  en  den  Raad  van  Justitie,  1795,"  Tijd.  TLV.,  1884,  29  :  229  f., 
esp.  332. 

2  De  Reus,  xli ;  Kalff,  "  Van  weesjongen  tot  Raad  van  Indie,"  Ind.  Gids, 
1894,  2 : 1791. 

3  Cf.  Instructions  of  1617  ;  three  pages  are  taken  up  in  Van  der  Chijs's 
edition  of  the  Plakaatboek  by  restrictions  on  the  raising  of  salaries. 


96  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

of  1200  florins  a  month,  and  this  sum  was  never  increased 
from  the  time  that  it  was  set  in  1624.  Other  officials 
were  paid  in  proportion.  I  will  select  some  examples  from 
the  list  printed  by  De  Reus,i  giving  the  monthly  salaries 
in  gulden  paid  in  1720  :  councillors,  350  ;  receiver  general, 
130  ;  upper-merchants,  130  ;  merchants,  60  ;  under-mer- 
chants,  40  ;  book-keepers,  30  ;  assistants,  10  to  24.  To 
these  salaries,  however,  should  be  added  allowances  for  the 
higher  officials,  which  amounted  to  about  one-fourth  of  the 
salary  at  the  end  of  the  seventeenth  century,  and  rations 
of  various  kinds.  Pensions  were  not  established  until 
after  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century. ^  On  the 
other  hand  only  one-half  of  the  salaries  was  paid  to 
officials  during  their  service  in  India  ;  the  remainder  was 
due  only  on  the  expiration  of  the  term  for  which  the 
official  had  engaged  to  serve.  As  a  result  the  commis- 
sioners sent  out  to  examine  conditions  in  India  before  the 
fall  of  the  Company  reported  that  there  were  very  few 
offices  in  India  whose  occupants  could  exist  on  the  legal 
income,^  and  this  state  of  affairs  had  existed  through  the 
whole  period  of  the  Company. 

It  is  not  surprising,  therefore,  to  find  that  the  Company's 
service  offered  few  attractions  to  men  of  ability  and  integ- 
rity, who  saw  before  them  the  chance  of  a  successful  career 

1 NOC,  234  ff. 

2  De  Reus,  NOC,  95.  In  1632  it  was  the  practice,  apparently,  to  give 
to  the  widows  of  the  Company's  servants  in  Batavia  half  the  monthly 
ration  of  their  dead  husbands,  but  this  allowance  was  probably  only  tem- 
porary, and  amounted  to  very  little  in  the  aggregate.  Instructions,  1632, 
Art.  21  ;  Mijer,  54. 

3  Rapport,  1795,  Jonge,  Opk.,  12:353.  Coen  (Stukken,  70,  Advys 
1623)  urged  that  as  little  cash  as  possible  should  be  paid  in  salaries,  but 
that  the  Company  should  pay  its  servants  in  truck  ;  I  cannot  say  to  what 
extent  this  proposal  was  carried  out. 


Ill  THE   EAST   INDIA   COMPANY:    GOVERNMENT  97 

at  home.  The  Company  showed  few  scruples  in  recruit- 
ing its  officials.  It  took  boys  who  ought  to  have  been  at 
school,  men  from  the  poorer  callings  who  welcomed  a 
change  because  they  could  not  lose  by  it,  and  outcasts 
from  the  middle  and  upper  classes  of  society.  Reviewing 
the  list  of  Governors  General,  it  appears  that  these  officials, 
the  highest  in  the  Indian  government,  were  generally  of 
humble  origin.  Three  rose  from  the  rank  of  common 
soldiers,  and  three  others  from  that  of  "  adelborst,"  little 
above  it.  One  was  originally  a  gunner's  mate,  one  a  ser- 
geant, one  a  sailor,  and  another  a  ship's  boy.  Represen- 
tatives of  the  noble  and  patrician  classes  were  rare.  In 
the  highest  places  below  the  rank  of  Governor  General  we 
find  an  orphan,  a  foundling,  a  runaway  student,  and  a 
charlatan,  and  we  are  assured  that  these  examples,  picked 
from  the  mass,  are  by  no  means  uncommon. ^ 

These  officials  were  sent  out  to  India  on  the  recom- 
mendations of  the  directors  of  the  separate  Chambers,  over 
which  the  Committee  of  Seventeen  had  very  little  control. 
From  the  time  of  the  first  Governor  General,  who  com- 
plained that  a  man  given  him  as  one  of  his  councillors 
was  entirely  unfitted  for  the  position,  was  lax  in  adminis- 
tration and  given  to  drink  ;  2  from  the  time  of  Coen,  who 
called  Batavia  "the  respectable  reformatory," ^  down  to 
the  end  of  the  Company's  rule,  the  men  furnished  for  the 
Indian  government  offered  hopelessly  bad  material  from 
which  to  create  a  good  administration.  "  Bad  in  Holland, 
good  in  East  India"   was  a  proverb  in  the  eighteenth 

1  Kalff,  "Van   Soldaat  tot  Landvoogd,"    Ind.   Gids,    1897,  2  :  1130  j 
"  Van  weesjongen,"  Ind.  Gids,  1894,  2  :  1582. 

2  Governor  General  Both  to  Directors,  1614,  Opk.,  4  :  8. 
8  Heeres,  "H.  Janssen,"  Ind.  Gids,  1896,  1  :  110. 


98  THE   DUTCH   IN  JAVA  chap. 

century.^  It  is  no  wonder  that  the  officials  abused  the 
powers  given  them,  that  they  neglected  the  interests  of 
the  Company  to  make  money  for  themselves  in  improper 
ways,  and  that  they  led  lives  as  vicious  in  regard  to  pri- 
vate as  to  public  morals. 

In  regard  to  the  promotion  of  officials,  so  far  as  I  have 
been  able  to  learn,  the  directors  showed  more  intelligence 
than  they  usually  did  in  matters  of  administration.  They 
sometimes,  but  rarely,  sent  out  from  the  Netherlands,  men 
who  were  put  immediately  into  positions  of  responsibilit}*; 
as  a  rule  the  men  whom  they  appointed  started  as  assist- 
ants, and  had  to  make  their  way  up  through  the  different 
ranks. 2  Promotion  seems  to  have  depended  mainly  on 
the  favor  of  the  Indian  government ;  appointments  made 
by  the  Governor  General  were  confirmed  at  home.  Inci- 
dental passages  in  the  Indian  reports  show  that  favoritism 
and  family  influence  played  their  part  in  promotion,  and 
that  bitter  jealousy  existed  between  officials  sometimes, 
but  it  is  surprising  that  conditions  were  no  worse.  It  is 
probably  true  that  able  men  rose  more  rapidly  (though 
not  more  surely)  in  the  days  of  the  Company  than  later. 
I  will  instance  the  careers  of  a  few  men  as  illustrations. 


1  Kalff,  Ind.  Gids,  1894,  2  :  1596.  "  Hollandsch  slecht,  Oostindisch. 
goed."  Wiese  expressed  in  1802  the  wish  that  the  directors  would 
exercise  more  care  in  the  choice  of  soldiers,  especially  officers,  "And 
not,  as  before,  count  everything  good  enough  for  East  India."  Jonge, 
Opk.  13  :  55. 

2  Frona  Mijer,  Verzam.,  117  note,  240,  it  appears  that  the  civil  service 
was  classified  in  grades  at  the  time  of  the  Company,  but  I  do  not  know 
what  were  the  practical  workings  of  the  system.  To  judge  from  a  pro- 
vision in  the  Instructions  of  1650  (  ib..  Ill),  forbidding  arbitrary  changes 
in  the  officials  attached  to  the  judicial  deplartment,  the  Indian  govern- 
ment could  not  have  been  held  strictly  to  any  scheme  of  a  classified  civil 
service. 


Ill  THE   EAST   INDIA   COMPANY:    GOVERNMENT  99 

Coeii,  one  of  the  greatest  of  the  Dutch  Governors  General, 
lived  in  the  early  period  of  the  Company,  and  had  the 
advantage,  unusual  later,  of  beginning  his  career  at  the 
grade  of  under-merchant,  in  1607.  From  that  grade  he 
rose  to  the  positions  of  upper-merchant  in  1612,  president 
of  the  factories  at  Bantam  and  Jacatra  in  1613,  Director 
General  in  1614,  and  Governor  General  in  1617. ^  Van 
Diemen  was  a  merchant  who  had  become  bankrupt  in 
Amsterdam,  and  who  enlisted  as  a  common  soldier  of  the 
Company,  reaching  India  under  an  assumed  name.  The 
Committee  of  Seventeen  warned  the  Indian  government 
against  him  in  1618,  but  in  1619  we  find  him  employed  as 
a  book-keeper,  1623  upper-merchant  and  councillor,  1629 
Director  General,  and  1636  Governor  General. ^  Camphuis, 
referred  to  above  as  the  Governor  General  who  abolished 
the  Council  that  had  created  him,  was  originally  a  Haar- 
lem boy  who  had  been  sent  to  work  for  a  silversmith  in 
Amsterdam.  At  eighteen  he  got  a  place  in  the  Company, 
probably  through  the  personal  influence  of  some  director. 
His  superior,  Maetsuyker,  who  is  said  to  have  arranged  a 
telescope  so  that  he  could  observe  how  business  was  being 
carried  on  in  the  counting  room,  favored  Camphuis  because 
he  would  work,  in  contrast  with  the  mass  of  the  young 
employees,  the  nephews  and  favorites  of  the  directors. 
Camphuis  was  advanced  until  he  became  Governor  Gen- 
eral in  the  peculiar  way  described  above. ^  Even  in  the 
latter  part  of  the  eighteenth  century  an  official  of  industry 
and  ability  could  win  rapid  advancement  by  his  merit,  as 

1  Lauts,  Coen,  Bijd.  TLV.,  1858,  2:2:  283. 

2  Van  der  Chijs,    "  Hoe  men  in  de  17.  Eeuw  Gouverneur  Generaal 
werd."     Tijd.  TLV.,  1885,  30  :  508  ff. 

3  Kalff,  "  Van  Ambachtsman,"  Ind.  Gids,  1894,  1  :  167  ff. 


100  THE  DUTCH   IN  JAVA  chap. 

is  shown  in  the  career  of  Governor  General  van  der  Parra.^ 
Instances  such  as  these  are  offset,  it  is  true,  by  many 
others  of  worthless  men  promoted  through  improper  influ- 
ences and  of  good  men  whose  careers  were  hurt  by  the 
personal  opposition  of  those  above  them,^  but  this  flexi- 
bility of  the  Indian  administration  in  regard  to  the  pro- 
motion of  of&cials  had  still  some  manifest  advantages  over 
the  bureaucratic  organization  of  later  times,  and  must  be 
regarded  as  one  of  the  more  favorable  features  of  the 
Company's  system. 

Let  me  review  the  conditions  of  the  Indian  administra- 
tion. The  men  were  gathered  largely  from  the  outcasts 
of  European  society.  These  men  were  underpaid  and 
exposed  to  every  temptation  that  was  offered  by  the  combi- 
nation of  a  weak  native  organization,  extraordinary  oppor- 
tunities in  trade,  and  an  almost  complete  absence  of  checks 
from  home  or  in  Java.  Under  these  circumstances  corrup- 
'tion  was  inevitable.  Ambition  and  greed,  it  is  said,  were 
the  ruling  traits  of  the  official  class.  Accounts  of  the  life 
of  the  Company's  Indian  servants  unite  in  describing  it  as 
luxurious  and  costly  in  the  extreme.  The  Company  tried 
in  vain  by  sumptuary  regulations  that  forbade  the  wearing 
of  precious  stones,  the  use  of  covered  carriages,  etc.,^  to 

1  Kalff,  "Van  Soldaat,"  Ind.  Gids,  1897,  2  :  1131. 

2  As  examples  of  this  last  class  could  be  cited  Van  Lawick  van  Pabst 
(Jonge,  Opk.,  13  :  269)  and  Dirk  van  Hogendorp  (Kalff,  "Dirk  van  Ho- 
gendorp,"  Ind.  Gids,  1896,  1  :  434  ff.). 

8  Cf.  Instructions,  1632,  art.  7,  Chijs,  NIP.,  1:265;  Reglement  of 
1676,  Opk.,  6:165.  Governor  General  Brouwer  wrote  in  1633  to  the 
directors  (Opk.,  5:  213)  that  the  marriages  of  officials  to  Dutch  women 
resulted  in  such  an  increa.se  of  wants  that  the  officials  were  sure  to  make 
up  in  some  way  for  their  low  salaries.  Similar  complaints,  not  un- 
common at  first,  led  to  a  general  observation  of  the  rule  that  officials 
should  lead  a  single  life  in  Java.     The  results  can  be  imagined. 


Ill  THE   EAST   INDIA   COMPANY:    GOVERNMENT  101 

prevent  the  expenditure  of  money  which  it  knew  could  not 
have  been  gained  in  its  service.  Such  regulations  were 
fruitless.  Extravagance  increased  with  the  course  of  time, 
and  an  utterly  despicable  form  of  society  grew  up,  in  which 
display  and  sensuous  enjoyment  were  taken  to  represent  the 
European  civilization  they  parodied. 

It  would  take  too  long  to  describe  all  the  means  that  the 
Company's  servants  employed  to  gain  the  wealth  which 
the  Company's  policy  in  trade  and  administration  forbade 
them.  An  idea  of  conditions  in  the  seventeenth  century 
can  be  gained  from  a  letter  written  by  an  Indian  councillor, 
who  had  been  deposed  for  participation  in  illicit  trade,  and 
who  attempted  to  defend  himself  by  accusing  his  associates. 
Such  evidence  is  not  always  trustworthy,  but  there  is  abun- 
dant confirmation  of  the  truth  of  the  general  picture  given. 
Officials  were  holding  a  plurality  of  offices  or  were  draw- 
ing the  Company's  pay  and  using  their  time  to  build  up 
their  private  fortunes;  they  were  selling  goods  to  the 
Company  at  advanced  prices ;  they  were  leading  a  luxuri- 
ous life  and  conniving  at  all  kinds  of  corruption  ;  silk  was 
stolen  from  the  Company's  warehouse  and  naval  stores 
were  given  away  from  the  Company's  storehouse.^  Daen- 
dels,  at  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century,  could  give 
a  list  of  ten  different  ways  in  which  officials  regularly  made 
their  income. ^     It  seems  possible,  however,  to  classify  the 

1  Leupe,  S.  Sweers,  Bijd.  TLV.,  1873,  3  :  8  :  35  ff.,  especially  44  ft 

2  These  wei-e  "  morsliandel,"  trade  in  the  products  of  the  country; 
"  overwigten,"  for  the  excess  of  products  received  by  government ;  "  min- 
wigten,"  excess  of  products,  kept  from  producer  (officials  received  con- 
tingents, etc.,  by  one  measure,  and  delivered  by  another)  ;  "spillagie," 
excessive  warehouse  allowance  ;  "stille  winsten,"  from  trade  in  monopo- 
lized articles  like  rice  and  opium;  " contributien "  and  "hommages," 
tribute  levied  on  the  people;  "heerendiensten,"  services  exacted  from 
the  people.     Staat,  p.  6. 


102  THE   DUTCH   IN  JAVA  chap. 

most  important  of  these  abuses  under  three  heads  ;  gains 
from  an  infraction  of  the  Company's  commercial  monop- 
oly; peculations  ;  and  gains  from  the  abuse  of  political 
authority. 

In  the  instructions  to  the  first  Governor  General,  before 
the  Company  had  been  in  existence  ten  years,  it  was  said 
that  it  had  suffered  severely  from  the  action  of  every  per- 
son in  its  service,  in  buying  up  the  most  desirable  wares 
on  his  own  account,  and  sending  them  home  as  a  private 
venture  in  the  Company's  ships,  contrary  to  the  terms  of 
his  engagement.  The  Governor  General  w^as  instructed 
most  emphatically  to  put  a  stop  to  this  "particular"  trade, 
and  must  swear  to  carry  out  the  Company's  directions. 
This  is  only  one  of  a  series  of  regulations,  beginning  before 
that  time  and  extending  through  all  the  instructions  and 
later  communications  of  the  directors,  aiming  to  protect  the 
Company  from  the  competition  of  its  own  servants.  These 
regulations  never  accomplished  anything ;  the  Company 
was  asking  too  much  and  giving  too  little.  The  directors 
might  go  to  any  extreme  in  the  penalties  they  imposed  for 
particular  trade  ;  they  could  not  get  their  orders  executed. 
The  Committee  of  Seventeen  passed  a  regulation  in  1676,^ 
forbidding  ship  captains  voyaging  from  the  Netherlands  to 
allow  any  vessels  to  come  alongside  before  they  reached  Ba- 
tavia,  on  penalty  of  death  or  at  least  of  public  flogging  and 
banishment.  Three  years  later  the  Governor  General  could 
write  that  the  Company's  trade  was  being  ruined  by  pri- 
vate trade,  and  that  this  was  plied  in  the  Company's  ships 
more  than  in  any  other  way.^  The  abuse  was  so  natural 
that  it  became  regularly  established  in  Java,  and  did  not 

lOpk.,  6:165. 

2  Governor  General  van  Goens  to  Directors,  1679.     Opk.,  7  :  2,  11. 


Ill  THE   EAST  INDIA  COMPANY:   GOVERNMENT  103 

disappear  until  the  monopoly  which  invited  it  was  gone. 
Even  preachers  engaged  in  trade,  and  conditions  were  such, 
not  long  before  the  fall  of  the  Company,  that  the  Gov- 
ernor General  himself  advised  a  young  official  as  to  how 
he  should  take  advantage  of  his  opportunities  in  this 
direction. 1 

The  second  way  in  which  officials  became  rich  was  by 
stealing  from  the  Company.  Some  forms  of  theft  came 
in  time  to  deserve  a  less  harsh  name,  as  they  were  so  cur- 
rent and  open  that  they  could  be  regarded  as  legal.  Such 
were  the  allowances  got  from  the  Company  for  the  deliv- 
ery and  warehousing  of  goods  collected  from  the  natives. 
It  is  probable  that  officials  continued,  during  the  existence 
of  the  Company,  to  take  advantage  of  the  absence  of 
checks  by  selling  to  it  and  buying  for  it  goods  at  unnec- 
essarily high  prices. 2  The  whole  system  of  accounting 
was  so  weak  and  so  loosely  administered  that  every  oppor- 
tunity for  peculation  was  given  the  Company's  servants. 
In  1785,  after  the  death  of  the  chief  cashier,  a  shortage  of 
a  million  gulden  was  discovered  in  the  Company's  treasury 
at  Batavia.  There  had  been  examinations  of  the  accounts 
and  cash,  but  these  had  been  intrusted  to  the  cashier's 
brother ;  nothing  was  done  to  punish  any  officials  or  to 

1  The  official,  Dirk  van  Hogendorp,  reached  an  understanding  with  the 
captain  of  a  ship  of  the  Company  going  to  Bengal,  to  carry  some  cargo  for 
him  ;  the  captain  misled  Van  Hogendorp,  who  lost  on  a  venture  in  French 
wines,  while  the  captain  himself  gained  on  a  venture  in  pepper.  Kalff, 
Dirk  van  Hogendorp.     Ind.  Gids,  1896,  1 :  300. 

2  Maetsuyker  wrote  that  he  could  not  buy  sugar  at  the  prices  set  by  the 
directors,  and  gave  excuses  for  paying  more.  "  Qui  s'excuse,  s'accuse," 
says  Van  den  Berg,  De  Econ.,  1892,  2  :  507.  Down  to  the  time  of  Daendel 
there  was  no  efficient  control  of  the  purchasing  department  of  the  Indian 
government,  and  there  is  no  reason  to  suppose  that  officials  were  unneces- 
sarily honest. 


104  THE  DUTCH  IN  JAVA  cHAf. 

recover  the  losses,  which  were  simply  written  off  the 
books.  Other  examples  of  official  dishonesty  could  be 
given  for  this  last  period  of  the  Company,  and  it  is  hard 
to  believe  that  they  represent  a  condition  peculiar  to  that 
time.^ 

Finally,  officials  used  the  tremendous  power  that  their 
position  in  the  Company  gave  them  to  extort  money  from 
the  few  Europeans  who  were  settled  in  Java  and  from 
the  many  natives.  There  is  an  anecdote  of  a  man  who 
inquired  the  meaning  of  the  initials  G.  D.  H.  carved  over 
a  gate  in  the  Castle  at  Batavia.  He  was  told  that  they 
stood  for  the  name  of  one  of  the  Governors  General. 
"  Then  I've  been  misinformed,"  replied  the  stranger,  "  for 
I  understood  that  they  meant  '  Give  up  half  '  "  (Geeft  de 
helft).2  Dirk  van  Hogendorp,  who  served  the  Company 
in  its  last  years,  said  that  officials  used  the  Company's 
peculiar  policy  in  the  sugar  trade  to  fill  their  own  pockets. 
They  secured,  whenever  they  pleased,  a  prohibition  on  the 
export  of  sugar,  and  so  depressed  prices  and  were  enabled 
to  buy  for  themselves  what  quantities  they  wanted ;  when 
they  had  enough,  they  removed  the  prohibition,  unloaded 
their  stock,  and  were  ready  to  repeat  the  process.  "  Is  it 
then  a  wonder,"  wrote  Van  Hogendorp,  "  that  some  have 
won  millions,  while  the  Company  has  gone  to  ruin,  the 
people  have  become  poor,  and  the  country  is  exhausted 
and  waste  ?  "  ^ 

The  natives  were  naturally  the  chosen  victims  of  the 
Dutch  officials,  who  could  squeeze  from  them  anything  in 

1  Cf.  M.  L.  van  Deventer,  Gesch.,  2  :  322  ff. 

2  Kalff,  "  Een  koloniaal  hervormer,"  Ind.  Gids,  1894,  1  :  960.  Of  a 
Governor  General  and  his  upper-merchant  it  was  said,  ' '  One  holds  the 
sack  and  the  other  fills  it." 

3  Berg,  Suikerind.,  De  Econ.,  1892,  2  :620. 


in  THE   EAST  INDIA   COMPANY:    GOVERNMENT  105 

the  guise  of  taxes  without  fear  of  their  resistance,  and 
without  the  necessity  of  accounting  with  the  government. 
About  1730  the  Commissioner  for  Native  Affairs  is  said 
to  have  made  an  annual  income  of  twenty  thousand  dollars 
(Dutch)  by  the  sale  of  licenses  to  the  Chinese.  The  gov- 
ernor of  Soerabaya  could  make  twenty-five  thousand  dol- 
lars (Dutch),  more  than  ten  times  his  salary,  by  farming 
out  the  right  to  conduct  the  trade  in  rice  to  the  exclusion 
of  competitors.  The  resident  of  Cheribon,  whose  salary 
amounted  to  less  than  a  thousand  gulden  a  year,  had  a  net 
income  of  over  a  hundred  thousand  gulden  gained  from 
exploitation  of  the  natives.^ 

As  has  been  said  above,  no  serious  step  to  improve 
these  conditions  was  ever  taken  by  the  directors ;  and  the 
evils  continued  substantially  the  same  until  the  rule  of 
Daendels,  in  the  early  part  of  the  nineteenth  century. 
The  directors  interfered  in  particularly  flagrant  cases  of 
maladministration,^  and  allowed  the  Governor  General, 
when  he  was  so  disposed,  to  effect  what  reforms  he  could 
without  making  demands  on  their  time  or  money.  They 
would  never  face  the  question  of  a  complete  reorganiza- 
tion of  the  administration.  The  hopelessness  of  looking 
to  them  for  the  necessary  changes  is  evident  in  their  sanc- 
tion of  the  "amptgeld,"  a  tax  on  officials  established  in 
the  later  period  of  the  Company.  This  tax,  laid  on  the 
officials  holding  the  more  lucrative  positions,  was  designed 
to  enable  the  Company  to  share  in  their  profits,  and  was, 
of  course,  a  complete  recognition  of  all  the  abuses  of  the 

1  De  Reus,  NOC,  168  note ;  Kalff,  Ind.  Gids,  1896, 1 :  306  ;  Veth,  Java, 
2  -.226-227. 

2  So  in  the  dismissal  of  Governor  General  Durven  and  others,  1731. 
Opk.,  9  :168. 


106  THE  DUTCH   IN  JAVA  chap. 

time  and  of  the  Company's  incapacity  to  do  away  with 
them.  In  many  cases  the  sum  paid  in  "  amptgeld "  ex- 
ceeded the  legal  salary  of  the  officials.^ 

In  every  branch  the  Company's  administration  was  costly 
and  inefficient.  In  the  fiscal  administration,  vitally  im- 
portant to  the  welfare  of  the  Company,  methods  of  book- 
keeping were  kept  unchanged  from  the  seventeenth  to  the 
nineteenth  century,  and  these  methods  were  so  poor  that  it 
was  impossible  to  learn  from  the  books  in  what  points  the 
Company  was  gaining  and  losing. ^  The  books  were  kept  in 
different  ways,  and  with  different  standards  of  money,  in 
the  various  factories,  and  they  were  not  kept  up  to  date.^ 
Every  attempt  to  maintain  an  efficient  control  and  audit 
was  a  failure.  The  books  were  examined  not  at  all,  or 
only  as  a  matter  of  form  ;  bribery  of  the  examiner  was 
probably  common.  Van  Dam,  who  was  commissioned  by 
the  directors  at  the  end  of  the  seventeenth  century  to 
write  a  history  of  the  Company  (which  was  afterwards 
locked  up  and  kept  secret),  said  :  "Everything  is  in  vain 
if  the  officials  will  not  do  right,  nor  hold  themselves  bound 

1  Wiese  on  Hogendorp's  Bericht,  Jonge,  Opk.,  13  :  89  ;  Governor  Gen- 
eral Daendels  to  Min.,  1808,  ib.,  13:321.  A  statement  of  the  revenue 
from  the  Eastern  districts,  1805-1800,  shows  that  the  "money  paid  by 
civil  officers  yearly  for  holding  their  situations"  amounted  to  over  one- 
fifth  of  the  total,  but  of  course  conditions  vrere  abnormal  then ;  the 
amount  received  for  contingents  seems  exceptionally  low.  See  the  fig- 
ures in  Raffles,  Sub.,  177. 

2  The  Commissioners  General  of  1795  acknowledged  that  they  could 
not  tell  from  the  Company's  books  what  the  Indian  navigation,  one  of  the 
greatest  expenses  of  the  Company,  really  cost.  Opk.,  12:337;  S.  van 
Deventer,  LS.,  1  :  4. 

3  When  Hartinghe  became  Governor  of  northeast  Java,  1754,  he  found 
the  trade  books  three  years  behind,  and  the  army  pay  rolls  still  worse. 
Mem.,  1761  ;  Opk.,  10:  331.  There  were  always  many  more  names  on 
the  pay  rolls  ("  mortepayen  ")  than  soldiers  in  the  service. 


Ill  THE   EAST   INDIA   COMPANY:    GOVEIINMENT  107 

by  the  oath  which  they  have  taken,  and,  especially,  will 
not  show  the  fidelity  which  they  have  promised.  Every- 
thing must  yield  to  the  passion  to  fill  the  purse  and  to 
become  rich  quickly.  From  the  beginning  to  now  men 
have  been  working  on  the  means  to  prevent  this,  but  they 
have  never  been  able  to  discover  the  necessary  corrections, 
and  nothing  that  they  have  done  has  had  the  anticipated 
success."^  This  might  have  been  written  with  as  much 
truth  in  1800  as  in  1700. 

To  match  this  example  of  commercial  maladministration 
we  may  take  as  an  illustration  of  the  Company's  weakness 
as  a  political  body  the  organization  and  management 
of  its  army.  This  was  reputed  to  be  the  weakest  spot 
in  the  Company's  organization ;  I  have  referred  above 
to  the  light  that  is  thrown  on  the  native  organization 
by  the  fact  that  it  was  conquered  through  such  means. 
The  pay  was  small,  and  half  of  it  was  reserved  by  the 
Company  until  the  term  of  service  had  expired ;  of  the 
remainder  the  soldier  received  only  one-half  in  cash,  and 
that  in  depreciated  currency,  while  the  rest  was  truck  on 
which  the  Company  made  lb  Jo  profit.  It  is  not  sur- 
prising that  men  were  got  to  serve  only  by  impressing, 
or  b}^  recruiting  among  the  most  degraded  class  of 
Europeans.  Discipline  was  so  lax  that  common  soldiers 
were  permitted  to  keep  mistresses  and  slaves,  while,  at 
the  same  time,  they  were  constantly  exposed  to  the 
danger  of  floggings  and  more  brutal  punishments.  The 
officers   received   poor  pay,  and   got  promotion,   not  by 

1  Reus,  NOC,  197  ;  I  translate  somewhat  freely  from  the  German  ver- 
sion of  the  Dutch  original.  For  details  in  the  text  and  further  details  see 
De  Reus,  Sections  B.  II,  2  b.  and  D.  Ill,  b.,  and  Van  der  Kemp,  "  Proeve 
eener  geschiedkundige  schets  over  liet  Staatsrekeningswezen  van  Neder- 
landsch  Indie,"  TNI.,  1876,  2  :  22  If. 


108  THE   DUTCH   IN   JAVA  chap. 

seniority,  but  by  favor.  The  higher  organization  was 
dangerously  loose ;  the  authority  of  the  commander-in- 
chief  reached  but  a  little  way  from  Batavia,  and  the 
troops  scattered  about  the  different  provinces  were  under 
the  command  of  governors  who  were  sometimes  merely 
civilians.  1 

In  the  preceding  description  of  the  Company's  adminis- 
tration I  have  taken  up  mainly  those  parts  of  it  that  had 
to  do  with  the  European  directors  and  with  the  general 
organization  and  direction  of  commerce.  To  the  Eu- 
ropean world  the  Company  was  merely  a  money-making 
corporation.  To  the  native,  however,  it  was  a  govern- 
ment, the  most  powerful  of  all  the  political  forces  with 
which  he  came  in  contact ;  and  to  complete  the  picture 
of  the  Company's  organization  it  is  necessary  to  describe 
those  parts  of  it  that  controlled,  for  better  or  for  worse, 
the  native  population. 

It  must  be  premised  that  the  Company's  government 
had,  even  at  the  end  of  its  history,  reached  no  uniformity 
in  its  application  in  the  different  parts  of  the  island.  The 
Company  had  begun  as  a  mercantile  corporation,  ruling 
only  its  own  servants,  and  had  been  led  or  forced  to 
extend  its  authority  through  a  long  period.  In  the  course 
of  time  it  broke  the  power  of  the  native  rulers,  but  the 
amount  of  control  that  it  imposed  on  each  varied  with  the 
difficulties  that  he  could  make  against  complete  subjuga- 
tion, and  with  the  attractions  that  his  country  offered  to 


1  De  Eeus,  108  ff.;  Louw,  "Derde  Jav.  Successie-oorlog.,"  9  ff.  For 
details  of  the  military  life  see  J.  A.  Duurkoop,  "  De  Soldaat  onder  de 
O.I.K.,"  TNI.,  1864,  2  :  7  ff.  The  army  was  not  so  bad  in  the  seventeenth 
century  as  later,  but  I  have  thought  it  allowable  to  combine  facts  from 
different  periods  in  this  brief  sketch. 


Ill  THE  EAST  INDIA   COMPANY:   GOVERNMENT  109 

commercial  and  political  exploitation.  The  Company's 
authority,  therefore,  even  at  the  end  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  shaded  off  from  the  centre  to  the  periphery  of 
its  establishment.  A  very  small  proportion  of  the  land 
of  Java,  that  composing  the  large  ports,  was  not  only 
ruled  but  also  administered  by  the  Company's  European 
officials.  Even  in  the  cities  there  were  exceptions  to  this 
direct  administration ;  the  Chinese  were  under  head-men 
of  their  own,  who  represented  the  Company's  government 
to  them.  Outside  the  cities  the  Dutch  gave  up  at  once 
any  claim  to  direct  contact  with  the  individual  natives. 
Even  the  country  directly  surrounding  the  capital,  Ba- 
tavia,  which  was  naturally  the  part  of  the  island  most 
thoroughly  subjected,  was  ruled  for  the  Company  by 
native  chiefs,  who  paid  the  Company  for  the  privilege, 
or  by  private  individuals  who  bought  the  land  outright 
and  received  with  it  most  of  the  rights  of  government. 

The  greatest  part  of  Java  was  ruled  for  the  Company 
under  different  forms  of  protectorate.  A  native  ruler 
against  whom  the  Company  had  warred  lost  some  of  his 
independence  when  he  was  conquered,  but  either  he  or 
some  member  of  his  family  was  ordinarily  allowed  still 
to  exercise  the  most  important  functions  of  government 
which  the  Company  was  unprepared  to  undertake. 
Changes  were  sometimes  made  in  the  upper  part  of 
the  native  political  organization,  as  those  for  instance 
by  which  the  districts  of  Madoera  and  Soerabaya  were 
divided  into  a  number  of  parts  instead  of  being  kept 
as  units,  but  there  were  only  a  few  districts,  around 
Batavia  and  east  of  it  in  Cheribon,  where  the  upper 
organization  was  abolished  altogether,  and  where  the  Com- 
pany ruled  through  minor  native  officials.    Ordinarily  the 


110  THE  DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

high  officials  of  the  old  organization  were  retained,  ruling 
as  "regents"  of  the  Company  instead  of  as  independent 
or  vassal  native  kings.  Their  position  was  ordinarily- 
hereditary.  Even  in  the  northeastern  part  of  the  island, 
where  the  Company's  authority  was  greatest  outside  of 
Batavia,  a  departure  was  rarely  made  from  the  direct 
line  of  succession,  and  then  only  as  a  result  of  bribery 
of  the  European  officials. 

The  powers  left  to  the  regents  varied  greatly,  as  I  have 
said,  in  different  parts  of  Java.  In  the  northeastern,  the 
richest  part  of  the  island,  the  Company  kept  them  under 
a  pretty  close  oversight ;  they  reported  regularly  to 
European  officials,  and  before  the  end  of  the  Company 
had  begun  to  give  proof  of  the  influence  of  European 
civilization  on  their  ways  of  life.^  In  some  of  the  poorer 
districts  of  the  west  the  supervision  was  much  less  close, 
while  Bantam  and  the  fragments  of  the  old  state  of 
Mataram  still  retained  a  nominal  independence  and  are 
excluded  from  the  scope  of  this  sketch. 

An  idea  of  the  position  of  the  regents  can  perhaps  best 
be  given  by  summarizing  one  of  the  contracts  or  commis- 
sions that  defined  their  powers  and  duties ;  I  choose  one 
from  the  northeast  coast,  dated  1773,  and  said  to  be  an 
example  of  many  similar  ones.^  The  regent  promised 
fealty  and  obedience  to  the  Company  ;  he  was  to  come 
and  give  personal  homage  as  often  as  was  required  of  him, 
and  was  to  hold  no  correspondence  with  any  other  chiefs 

1  Hartinghe,  1761,  Opk.,  10:353;  Van  der  Burgh,  1780,  ih.,  11:461. 
Van  Overstraten  could  speak  of  native  ofiQcials  in  1793  as  being  "  tools" 
of  the  Europeans.     Ih.,  12  :  313. 

2  This  can  be  found  in  Jonge,  11 :  253  ff.  or  Eindres.,  3  ;  Bijl.  F.  A 
list  of  conditions  on  which  a  regent  was  to  rule  in  Madoera,  1745  (Opk., 
10  :  57  ff.),  shows  some  variations  but  none  of  great  moment. 


in  THE   EAST   INDIA   COMPANY:    GOVERNIVIENT  111 

without  permission.  He  was  to  keep  the  peace  among 
his  own  people  and  Math  his  neighbors,  was  to  rule  fairly, 
not  to  levy  new  taxes,  and  not  to  dismiss  his  officials 
without  the  Company's  consent.  He  was  to  do  nothing 
of  moment  without  the  Company's  permission,  and  was  to 
have  jurisdiction  only  over  petty  criminal  cases,  sending 
the  important  ones  to  be  tried  by  the  Company's  officials. 
He  promised  to  encourage  agriculture,  to  lease  no  villages 
to  Chinamen,  to  obey  the  Company's  commercial  regu- 
lations, and  to  help  stop  their  infraction.  In  return  for 
the  Company's  favor,  finally,  he  promised  annually  to 
deliver  at  fixed  prices  certain  quantities  of  rice,  indigo, 
timber,  and  cotton  yarn,  to  pay  a  sum  of  money,  and  to 
furnish  horses  and  laborers  for  the  Company's  service. 

These  conditions  suggest  the  powers  that  were  left  to 
the  regent,  but  they  do  not  tell  the  investigator  how  those 
powers  were  exercised  and  how  successful  the  Company 
was  in  enforcing  the  conditions  that  it  set.  The  remark 
that  Governor  General  Mossels  made  ^  of  conditions  in 
the  west  is  equally  applicable  to  all  parts  of  Java  where 
the  Company  attempted  to  rule ;  the  regents  exercised  as 
much  authority  as  they  could.  The  question,  then,  of 
the  character  of  the  Company's  rule  over  the  natives  in 
Java  is  a  question  not  of  principle  but  of  practice.  On 
such  a  question  it  is  impossible  to  generalize.  One  au- 
thor ^  says  that  the  Dutch  kept  their  position  in  Java  by 
leaving  the  regents  alone,  and  sacrificing  the  people  to 
them.  Another,^  to  refute  this  statement,  points  to  the 
restrictions   imposed  on   the  regents  and   contends  that 

1  Aanmerkingen,  1751,  Opk.,  10:  239. 

2  Veth,  Java,  2  :  203. 

«  M.  L.  van  Deventer,  Gesch.,  2  :  299  £f. 


112  THE   DUTCH   IN  JAVA  chap. 

these  were  carried  into  effect  sufficiently  to  assure  the 
welfare  of  the  mass  of  the  population.  He  can  cite  a 
number  of  cases  in  which  the  Dutch  interfered  to  protect 
the  people  from  the  native  rulers  or  to  improve  some  weak 
points  in  the  native  organization.^  There  were  districts, 
if  we  can  trust  official  reports,  in  which  no  interference 
was  necessary .2  It  is  unquestionable,  however,  that  there 
were  many  cases  in  which  interference  was  sadly  needed 
and  came  late  or  not  at  all.^  The  Company  was  disin- 
clined to  meet  the  political  complications  that  were  almost 
sure  to  follow  when  a  regent  was  deposed,  and  always 
followed  a  temporizing  policy.  And,  as  will  appear  im- 
mediately, the  Dutch  could  do  little  to  remedy  abuses  in 
the  native  organization  without  interfering  to  remedy 
faults  in  its  personnel.  Everything  that  I  have  seen  sup- 
ports Raffles's  statement,  that  the  personal  character  of  the 
regent  afforded  "  almost  the  only  security  for  the  good 
treatment  and  prosperity  of  the  cultivators.''  * 

A  great  deal  depended  on  the  official  of  the  Company 
who  was  intrusted  with  the  supervision  of  the  native 
governments.  This  official  has  in  modern  times  grown 
into  the  "  resident,"  the  most  important  member  of  the  ter- 
ritorial administration,  and  I  shall  use  that  title  in  speak- 
ing of    conditions   in  the    time  of  the  Company,  though 

1  Gesch.,  2 :  197  ;  four  cases  of  a  regent  being  deposed  for  extortion. 
lb.  295,  improvement  of  the  judicial  organization. 

2  Hartinghe,  Kort  Verslag,  1756,  says  ttiat  because  of  the  good  govern- 
ment of  the  regent  Samarang  was  populous  and  flourishing  ;  according  to 
the  proverb  a  man  could  carry  a  sack  of  money  to  Soerakarta  without 
danger,     Opk.,  10  :  305. 

5  Cf.  Jonge,  Opk.,  12 :  529,  with  its  description  of  a  regent  who  was 
well  disposed  to  the  Company,  but  extravagant  and  an  extortioner.  lb., 
13:154,  155,  pitiful  conditions  in  Madoera.  The  li.st  could  easily  be 
extended.  *  Minute,  1813,  Sub.,  260. 


Ill  THE   EAST   INDIA   COMPANY:    GOVEKNMENT  113 

other  titles  were  given  to  men  fulfilling  similar  functions. 
The  residents  were  by  no  means  as  numerous  as  the 
regents  ;  one  was  assigned  to  each  of  the  courts  of  the 
semi-independent  princes,  and  others  had  each  a  group  of 
regencies  in  the  districts  where  the  Company  had  estab- 
lished a  more  effective  suzerainty.  The  resident  was  the 
political  agent  who  kept  watch  of  the  workings  of  the 
native  government,  and  used  his  influence,  as  representing 
the  power  of  the  Company,  to  check  abuses  and  urge 
reforms. 

The  position  was  a  difficult  one,  requiring  tact  and 
patience,  and  yet  a  certain  amount  of  determination  and 
insistence  in  dealing  with  the  native  rulers  ;  all  the  pos- 
sible benefits  of  Dutch  influence  could  be  lost  by  the  dis- 
play of  too  much  or  too  little  zeal.  In  view  of  the  general 
character  of  the  Company's  servants,  it  will  not  surprise 
the  reader  to  learn  that  good  residents  were  the  exception 
rather  than  the  rule  during  the  period  of  the  Company's 
administration.  1  The  resident  was  ordinarily  a  man  of 
low  origin,  with  all  the  faults  and  vices  of  his  fellows, 
entirely  incompetent  to  understand  the  native  organization 
through  which  he  must  work,  and  to  improve  properly 
the  opportunities  it  offered  him.  If  the  Governor  General 
could  bring  on  a  useless  war  by  lack  of  politeness  to  a 
noble,2  it  was  all  the  more  natural  that  the  residents 
should  lower  the  Dutch  influence  in  the  eyes  of  the 
natives  by  their  disregard  of  native  etiquette  and  by  their 
personal  vices. ^      In  spite  of  all  regulations  the  residents 

1  Cf.  Mem.  Van  Vos,  1771,  Opk.,  11 :  171. 

2  K.  de  Reus,  NOC,  xxxvii. 

8  The  Dutch  resident  at  Bantam,  in  the  earliest  period  of  the  Company, 
was  a  drunkard,  beat  the  natives,  and  had  to  be  removed.  Governor 
General  Both  to  Directors,   1614,   Opk.,  4  :  10,  13.     Speelman  wrote  in 


114  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

bore  themselves  like  petty  princes,  parading  about  in  four- 
horse  chariots  with  drums  and  guns,  despising  the  help- 
less natives  and  growing  rich  off  them.i  The  combination 
of  powers  in  the  person  of  the  resident,  by  which  he  was 
not  only  a  political  but  a  fiscal  agent  of  the  Company, 
intrusted  with  the  collection  of  contingents  and  deliveries, 
gave  him  a  chance  for  extortion  which  he  could  seldom 
resist.  On  the  other  hand  the  lack  of  efficient  control 
made  the  powers  of  the  resident  a  danger  to  the  Dutch  as 
well  as  to  the  natives,  and  there  were  cases  in  which  he 
was  more  than  suspected  of  hurting  rather  than  aiding 
the  interests  of  the  government. ^ 

The  resident  had  to  do  ordinarily  only  with  the  highest 
native  officials,  and  had  to  trust  the  regent  to  attend  to 
the  execution  of  the  measures  that  he  had  approved. 
Such  control  of  government  as  is  implied  in  the  direction 
of  subordinate  officials  was  lacking  to  the  Company  in 
most  parts  of  Java.  Exceptions  appear  in  some  dis- 
tricts,^ but  not  enough  to  require  a  modification  of  the 

1677  that  it  was  notorious  that  the  deceased  resident  of  Soerabaya  had 
hurt  the  Company's  standing  with  the  natives  by  his  abuses.  Opk., 
7  :  143.  At  the  close  of  the  Company's  rule  the  resident  of  Soerakarta 
abused  his  power  to  oppress  the  people  and  roused  the  native  rulers 
against  the  Dutch.     Opk.,  12  :  161. 

1  Mem.  of  Hartingh,  1761,  Opk.,  10  :  358. 

2  Veth,  Java,  2  :  210  ;  Opk.,  13 :  128. 

'  In  Krawang  and  in  the  northeast  the  Dutch  interfered  on  occasion 
to  depose  subordinate  officials  who  had  misbehaved  ;  Opk.,  12 :  197,  313. 
Special  native  agents  were  sometimes  maintained  by  the  Company  to 
watch  and  check  the  workings  of  the  native  organization,  but  the  device 
did  not  work  successfully  in  the  period  of  the  Company.  These  officials 
are  described  as  men  of  the  worst  character,  who  took  advantage  of  their 
position  and  were  a  scourge  to  the  natives.  Mem.  of  Hartingh,  N.  E. 
Coast,  1761,  Opk.,  10:  357.  Another  device,  that  of  setting  one  regent  to 
watch  others,  was  also  unsatisfactory.  Mem,  of  Siberg,  N.  E.  Coast, 
1787,  Opk.,  12:120. 


lu  THE   EAST   INDIA  COMPANY:    GOVERNMENT  115 

general  statement.  In  a  semi-independent  state  like  Ban- 
tam the  Dutch  resident  had  intercourse  with  no  other 
people  than  the  royal  family  and  a  half  dozen  of  the 
most  prominent  court  ofhcials.^ 

The  weakness  and  evils  of  the  Company's  government 
in  Java  can  best  be  discussed  in  relation  to  the  system 
of  contingents,  by  which  it  gained  an  important  part  of 
its  revenue.  It  is  useless  to  argue,  as  does  M.  L.  van  De- 
venter,2  from  the  official  statements  of  payments  required 
by  the  Company,  that  the  burden  of  these  payments  on  the 
natives  was  light.  To  do  that  is  to  assume  that  the  double 
administration  of  Dutch  and  natives  in  Java  was  honest, 
and  that  the  people  paid  out  no  more  than  the  Company 
received.  The  reverse  was  the  case.  At  every  step  in 
the  progress  of  forced  deliveries  from  the  producer  to  the 
Company's  treasury  the  officials,  through  whose  hands  they 
passed,  took  toll,  so  that  a  small  amount  received  by  the 
Company  represented  an  initial  payment  on  the  part  of 
the  cultivator  that  was  often  oppressive  and  sometimes 
crushing. 

Dutch  and  native  officials  offended  in  almost  equal 
degree.  The  princely  income  which  some  residents  en- 
joyed came  to  them  only  by  their  exactions  from  the 
natives  in  defiance  of  the  conditions  which  the  Company 
had  imposed.  The  regents  were  forced  to  give  over- 
weight and  to  receive  under-pay  ;  they  had  to  give  besides 
what  was  due  to  the  Company  as  much  again  or  more  for 
the  residents'  private  purse.^  The  abuses  which  the 
regents  suffered  at  the  hands  of  the  residents  they  made 

1  Mem.  of  Reijnouts,  177P,  Opk.,  11 :  378. 

2  Gesch.,  2  :  303. 

8  See  the  details  collected  in  Van  Soest,  KS.,  1  :  68,  Veth,  Java,  2  :  249. 


116  THE   DUTCH   IN  JAVA  -     CHAt. 

up  with  interest  on  their  own  subordinates.  It  appeared 
on  investigation  in  the  time  of  Raffles  that  it  was  impos- 
sible to  demand  a  greater  contingent  of  rice  from  the  com- 
mon people,  who  had  reached  the  limit  of  their  ability  to 
pay,  but  that  the  regent  had  a  great  surplus  which  he  had 
exacted  from  them  and  which  he  retained  for  himself.  ^ 
On  the  other  hand  the  small  pay  which  the  government 
offered  for  the  forced  deliveries,  and  which  came  from  the 
residents'  hands  still  smaller,  was  diminished  again  or  dis- 
appeared completely  after  it  reached  the  regent.  A  large 
proportion  of  the  natives  received  no  compensation  what- 
ever for  the  products  that  they  furnished  ;  the  others 
could  consider  themselves  fortunate  if  they  got  half  of 
what  the  government  offered,  and  got  this  in  cash  instead 
of  overvalued  truck. ^  Governor  General  van  Imhoff,  who 
made  a  journey  in  the  interior  of  Java  in  1744,  found 
many  districts  from  which  the  people  had  emigrated,  and 
he  attributed  their  flight  to  the  exactions  of  the  native 
rulers  intrusted  with  the  collection  of  the  products  that 
the  country  was  bound  to  deliver.  The  native  rulers 
kept  the  government  pay,  and  levied  all  kinds  of  con- 
tributions besides  those  that  reached  the  government 
treasury.^ 

I  would  not  be  understood  as  saying  that  the  forced 
deliveries  were  felt  everywhere  as  a  great  burden.  Neder- 
burgh  said  that  there  were  cases  in  which  the  natives  paid 
money  to  the  regent  instead  of  products,  and  the  regent 

1  Eind.,  2  :  Bijl.  NN.,  174.  Cf.  the  figures  of  expenses  in  cultures 
given  by  Nederburgli,  "  Consideratien  over  de  .  .  .  regentschappen,"  Tijd. 
TLV.,  1855,  3  :  198,  208  ;  they  show  that  the  regents  gained  heavily. 

2  Cf.  Opk.  11  :  19,  334,  466  ;  12  :  198. 

3  "Reis  van  den  Gouverneur  Generaal  in  den  Jakatrasche  Boven- 
landen,"  Bijd.  TLV.,  1863,  2:7:  244. 


Ill  THE   EAST   INDIA   COMPANY:    GOVERNMENT  117 

then  bought  up  the  products  which  he  was  bound  to 
deliver.  1  Such  an  arrangement  appears  to  be  so  much 
like  modern  methods  of  business  and  taxation  that  we  can 
assume  it  to  have  been  free  from  very  serious  abuses,  but 
we  must  consider  it  to  have  been  exceptional  in  view  of 
the  reports  that  reach  us.  I  shall  speak  later  of  the  value 
to  the  natives  of  Java  of  the  Company's  rule ;  I  believe  it 
to  have  been  a  blessing  to  them.  One  may  believe  that 
and  still  emphasize  the  facts  that  the  Company  tended 
constantly  to  increase  the  demands  on  the  native  organiza- 
tion, that  every  demand  was  magnified  many  fold  in  pass- 
ing down  the  ranks  of  officials,  and  that  in  some  places 
the  pressure  came  to  be  greater  than  the  natives  could 
bear.  2 

As  the  Company's  system  was  the  natural  basis  for  the 
culture  system  of  later  times  it  is  proper  here  to  emphasize 
a  fact  that  will  be  discussed  more  fully  later, — the  fact  that 
any  system  of  this  kind  by  which  a  government  attempts 
to  control  production  is  likely  to  be  attended  by  loss  to 
the  people  far  more  than  offsetting  the  gain  to  the  govern- 
ment. No  special  criticism  can  be  passed  on  the  demands 
the  Company  made  for  rice ;  it  was  a  product  that  all  the 
people  raised,  and  in  which  they  could  pay  their  dues  more 

1  "  Consideratien,"  Tijd.  TLV.,  p.  139. 

2  Even  in  a  semi-independent  state  like  Bantam  the  influence  of  the 
Company  was  felt  in  a  quadrupling  of  the  rice  tax,  and  misery  and  ruin 
were  ascribed  to  the  Company's  policy.  J.  de  E.  van  Breugel, 
"Bedenkingen  oven  den  Staat  van  Bantam"  (1786),  Bijd.  TLV.,  1856, 
2:1:  116,  145  ff.  ;  id.,  "  Beschrijving  van  het  koningrijk  Bantam  "  (1787), 
ib.,  p.  319.  The  decline  in  Bantam  was  attributed  in  part  to  a  decrease 
in  the  number  of  slaves  who  had  done  the  work  on  the  forced  cultures. 
Governor  General  Alting  to  Directors,  1787,  Opk.,  12  :  127.  For  many  de- 
tails about  the  working  of  the  contingent  system  I  would  refer  to  "De 
rijstkultuur  of  Java  vijftig  jaren  gelcden,"  Bijd.  TLV.,  1854,  1:2:  1-117. 


118  THE  DUTCH   IN  JAVA  chap. 

readily  even  than  in  money.  When,  however,  the  Com- 
pany demanded  the  delivery  of  other  products,  in  the  culti- 
vation of  which  the  people  had  no  experience,  it  imposed 
on  them  hardships  entirely  incommensurate  with  the  gain 
it  made.  The  cultivation  and  preparation  of  indigo  were 
"  a  real  torment "  for  the  natives,  and  the  Company  made 
small  profits  from  the  proceeds;  there  was  a  question 
whether  it  did  not  lose  by  diverting  labor  from  other 
crops. ^  The  Company  demanded  cotton  yarn  of  a  certain 
grade,  among  other  forced  deliveries ;  the  spinning  caused 
the  people  an  incredible  amount  of  labor  and  trouble,  and 
people  who  knew  thought  there  was  an  actual  disadvantage 
in  having  the  thread  of  the  fineness  that  caused  this  difii- 
culty.  ^ 

The  regular  source  of  supply  for  pepper  was  Bantam 
and  Sumatra,  but  the  Company  determined  to  extend  its 
cultivation  in  the  eastern  part  of  Java;  most  of  the  pepper 
was  planted  on  unsuitable  land,  some  where  it  did  not 
grow  at  all,  some  where  only  a  few  sickly  vines  grew,  and 
some  that  grew  high  but  bore  no  fruit.  ^  To  get  more 
coffee  the  Company  spasmodically  ordered  an  increase  in 
the  planting  of  the  trees,  but  the  natives  took  no  interest 
in  the  cultivation  of  a  crop  which  they  did  not  understand, 
and  the  returns  from  which  were  deferred  for  a  number 
of  years  if  they  came  at  all.  The  young  trees  planted 
were  so  badly  cultivated  that  more  than  three-quarters  of 
them  died.  The  ground  was  only  scraped,  not  ploughed 
and  thoroughly  cleansed  from  weeds,  and  the  trees  were 
stuck  in  without  proper  arrangement  of  the  earth  around 

1  Wiese  on  Hogendorp's  Bericht,  Opk.,  13  :  75. 

2  Eeis  van  Engelhardt,  Opk.,  13  :  209. 

3  Verslag  van  IJsseldijk,  Opk.,  12  :  489. 


HI  THE   EAST   INDIA   COMPANY:    GOVERNMENT  119 

their  roots.  Weeds  grew  up,  buffalo  and  wild  pigs  broke 
in,  and  in  a  few  months  nothing  was  to  be  seen  of  the 
"plantation."^ 

In  the  eighteenth  century  the  Company  attempted  some 
reforms  in  the  administration  of  the  contingents,  especially 
to  make  sure  that  the  small  pay  it  gave  should  reach  the 
cultivator.  So  in  1734  the  Governor  General  wrote  to 
the  directors  ^  that  he  had  decided  to  have  the  Company 
pay  the  cultivator  directly  for  pepper  in  the  Lampong  dis- 
tricts (Sumatra),  as  the  poor  people  were  cheated  by  the 
native  agents  in  both  measure  and  price,  and  some  got 
nothing  at  all  for  what  they  delivered.  The  regula- 
tion did  some  good,  but  the  servants  of  the  company 
cheated  the  people  just  as  the  natives  had  done,  and  brought 
the  Company  into  bad  repute.  Van  Imhoff,  as  the  result 
of  his  journey  in  Central  Java,  ordered  that  Dutch  officials 
instead  of  the  regents  should  receive  and  pay  for  the  rice 
delivered,^  and  the  same  measure  was  taken  in  the  con- 
quered lands  of  the  eastern  extremity  of  the  island,*  but 
the  old  system  was  adhered  to  in  other  parts  of  the  island,^ 
and  the  new  system  was  never  satisfactorily  carried  out. 

Between  the  Dutch  legislators  and  the  common  people 
the  native  political  organization  stood  as  a  bar  to  any 

1  Verslag  Van  Guitard,  Opk.,  12  :  198,  205.  For  the  difficulties  of  the 
coffee  culture,  and  the  poor  quality  of  the  product  see  also  Opk.,  13  :  67 
and  206.  Crawf oi'd,  Hist.  Ind.  Arch. ,  1  :  491  says  that  under  forced  cul- 
ture a  coffee  tree  returned  one  and  one-quarter  pounds  a  year,  while  the 
product  of  a  tree  even  ill  cared  for  by  a  private  cultivator  was  two  pounds. 
Forced  deliveries  had  the  same  deplorable  effect  on  the  condition  of  the 
forests.     Opk.,  13:219. 

2Jonge,  Opk.,  9:233. 

8  Governor  General  to  Directors,  1747,  Opk.,  10  :  106. 

*  Jonge,  Opk.,  11  :  Ixii. 

6  Cf.  Memorie  of  Mom,  Resident  of  Cheribon,  1778,  Opk.,  11  :  330. 


120  THE   DUTCH   IN  JAVA  chap. 

effectual  improvement.  In  so  far  as  the  Company  was 
willing  to  extend  its  own  administration,  it  could  hope  for 
at  least  a  partial  fulfilment  of  its  commands,  but  the 
charges  of  the  administration  increased  in  geometrical 
progression  as  the  Company  sent  its  officials  deeper  into 
the  ranks  of  the  natives,  and  the  trading  company  grudged 
the  money  that  was  taken  from  its  profits.  It  left  the 
Javanese,  therefore,  to  their  native  rulers,  on  the  pretence 
of  favoring  them  by  allowing  them  to  keep  to  their  own 
laws  and  customs,  but  with  the  real  motive  of  self-interest. 
The  most  enlightened  among  the  Dutch  officials  saw  the 
evils  of  this  course,  and  realized  that  no  lasting  reform  in 
the  Company's  political  system  was  possible  without  a 
reform  in  the  conditions  of  native  government. ^  One  of 
the  officials  who  made  himself  prominent  by  his  proposals 
of  reform  in  the  last  days  of  the  Company  conducted  an 
investigation  into  the  workings  of  the  native  government 
with  the  idea  of  repressing  its  abuses.  He  found,  how- 
ever, that  his  work  was  one  of  almost  inconceivable  diffi- 
culty, "  since  there  is  not  a  district  here  in  Java,  not  even 
a  village,  which  is  ruled  like  the  others,  as  everything 
with  the  Javanese  is  based  on  adats  or  customs,  which  are 
often  as  uncertain  as  they  are  oppressive. "^  Without  the 
support  from  those  above  him,  the  best  of  the  Company's 
officials  might  well  hesitate  to  begin  a  task  to  which  there 
seemed  no  end,  —  which,  indeed,  the  Dutch  have  not  yet 
completed.     Furthermore,  in  the  only  period  when  plans 

1  Cf .  Kort  Begrip  of  Van  Imhoff,  1746,  Jonge,  Opk.,  10 :  96  ;  Van  Over- 
straten  to  Governor  General,  1792,  Opk.,  12:  291.  Dirk  van  Hogendorp 
called  the  system  "  very  faulty,  unhappy  in  its  effect  on  land  and  people, 
and  harmful  to  the  sovereign  himself";  he  demanded  a  break  from 
"feudalism."     Schets,  Eindres.,  2,  Bijl.  LL.,  152. 

2  Van  Overstraten  to  Governor  General,  1796,  Opk.,  12  :  408. 


Ill  THE   EAST   INDIA   COMPANY:    GOVERNMENT  121 

of  a  general  reform  were  seriously  considered  by  the  Com- 
pany's officials,  the  Company  itself  was  already  tottering, 
and  Java  was  threatened  by  foreign  enemies,  while  for  tlie 
successful  execution  of  such  plans  as  were  proposed  a 
period  of  peace  and  prosperity  seemed  essential. ^  The 
period  of  the  Company  closes  therefore  with  its  system 
still  unchanged. 2 

In  the  way  of  positive  contributions  to  the  welfare  of 
its  subjects  in  Java  the  East  India  Company  did  practi- 
cally nothing.  There  was  no  lack  of  directions  from 
home  to  treat  the  natives  well,  but  there  was  no  support 
in  the  carrying  out  of  these  directions,  which  were  really 
irreconcilable  with  the  Company's  system.  Beside  the 
directions  which  the  directors  sent  their  officials,  it  is  in- 
structive to  place  the  prayer  to  their  God  which  they 
made  at  every  assembly,  asking  him  to  bless  the  financial 
affairs  of  the  Company,  but  saying  not  a  word  about  the 
natives.^  There  can  be  no  doubt  as  to  which  interest 
they  really  had  at  heart.  So  in  the  matter  of  religion 
and  instruction,  they  bade  every  councillor  to  make  an 
annual  report  on  trade  and  war  and  especially  (!)  on  the 
extension  of  Christianity  and  schools,*  but  they  were 
forced  only  by  popular  pressure  in  the  Netherlands  to 
take  some  positive  action.^  They  sent  out  a  few  ministers 
and  teachers  under  strict  control,  but  the  amount  these 

1  Verslag  of  Van  IJsseldijk,  1799,  Opk.,  12  :  649. 

2  Eefonns  had  been  attempted  in  matters  of  detail  in  the  eighteenth 
century,  but  they  were  not  lasting.  Such  were  Van  Imhoff' s  abolition  of 
the  interior  transit  duties  in  Mataram  (Veth,  Java,  2 :  164  :  M.  L.  van 
Deventer,  Gesch.,  2:131)  and  R.  de  Klerk's  proclamation  abolishing 
forced  services  (Opk.,  11 :  337  ff.,  Eind.,  3  :  Bijl.  E,  123). 

3  Klerk  de  Reus,  NOC,  167. 

*  Chijs,  NIP.,  1  :  38,  Instr.  1017,  Art.  32  ;  Mijer,  Verz.,  33. 
6  Van  Rees,  KP.,  241  ff. 


122  THE  DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

accomplished  was  inconsiderable.^  So  small  was  the 
amount  of  culture  received  by  Java  from  the  Netherlands 
that  the  Dutch  themselves  degenerated  ;  they  and  their 
children  spoke  Malay  and  Portuguese  to  the  exclusion 
of  their  own  tongue. ^  Where  the  Dutch  got  little,  the 
natives  got  practically  nothing  ;  a  commission  which  re- 
ported in  1803  said  that  the  natives,  after  two  hundred 
years'  intercourse  with  Europeans,  had  made  "  a  few  steps 
forward,"  ^  but  the  reader  wonders  what  basis  there  is 
even  for  this  mild  assertion. 

It  is  impossible  to  study  the  history  of  the  Dutch  East 
India  Company  without  being  impressed  with  the  truth 
of  what  Adam  Smith  has  said  of  the  inconsistency  of  the 
functions  of  merchant  and  sovereign  united  in  the  same 
corporation.  I  have  suggested  already  the  evils  that 
arose  from  the  twofold  nature  of  the  Company,  and  shall 
return  later  to  the  discussion  of  this  general  topic  ;  it  is 
sufficient  here  to  note  that  from  the  earliest  days  of  the 
Company  and  throughout  its  history,  the  true  cause  of  its 
poor  government  was  recognized.*  Van  Mossel  in  his 
memorial  of  1753^  clearly  saw  the  opposition  between  the 

1  In  1810  Daendels  found  but  six  ministers  in  all  of  the  Dutch  East 
Indies.  Opk.,  13 :  448.  For  the  small  number  of  Christian  natives  see 
M.  L.  van  Deventer,  Gesch.,  2  :  265. 

2  M.  L.  van  Deventer,  Gesch.,  2:259  ff. ;  Kalff,  "Van  Soldaat  tot 
Landvoogd,"  Ind.  Gids,  1897,  2  :  1134.  The  corruptions  in  spelling  and 
grammar  that  appear  in  the  reports  of  Dutch  officials  testify  to  their 
scanty  education. 

8  Mijer,  Verzam.,  131. 

*  Cf.  Van  Rees,  114,  161,  v^ith  extracts  from  Usselincx  and  from  a 
pamphlet  of  1622.  Pieter  van  Hoorn,  in  his  "  Praeparatoire  Considera- 
tien,"  1675,  attempted  to  prove  to  the  Indian  and  home  governments  that 
colonies  were  better  ruled  by  "distinguished  and  generous  powers"  than 
by  merchants  seeking  always  a  momentary  gain.     Jonge,  Opk.,  6:  133. 

5  Jonge,  Opk.,  10:213,  216. 


xn  THE    EAST   INDIA   COMPANY:    GOVERNMENT  12:3 

Company's  interests  as  merchant  and  as  sovereign,  and 
saw  also  that  this  division  in  the  very  being  of  the 
Company  was  a  constant  threat  to  its  prosperity.  The 
relief  which  he  suggested  was,  however,  only  a  palliative 
for  the  evil,  and  neither  this  nor  any  other  improvement 
was  acceptable  to  the  directors.  The  statement  of  Raffles  ^ 
that  the  Dutch  "  always  have  contemplated  the  prosperity 
of  the  Eastern  tribes  with  the  invidious  regret  of  a  rival 
shopkeeper,  and  regarded  their  progress  in  civilization 
with  the  jealousy  of  a  timorous  despot,"'  was  written  in 
1811,  before  he  landed  in  Java,  but  it  testifies  to  the 
knowledge  that  he  already  had  of  the  policy  pursued  by 
the  Dutch,  and  is  confirmed  by  abundant  evidence  from 
the  Dutch  themselves. ^  It  is  true,  as  Veth  ^  says,  that  the 
Company  was  greedy  rather  than  cruel ;  it  did  not  oppress 
the  natives  by  design.  Oppression  was,  however,  the 
necessary  result  of  a  system  which  made  present  gain  its 
only  goal,  and  prohibited  the  expenditure  of  money  on 
any  object  from  which  direct  and  immediate  returns 
could  not  be  foreseen. 

To  the  citizen  of  a  modern  state  the  Company's  system, 
by  which  it  used  the  native  officials  as  taskmasters  to 
supply  its  constantly  increasing  demands  and  left  the 
mass  of  the  population  almost  helpless  under  the  abuses 
of  these  officials,  must  seem  entirely  reprehensible.  Was 
not  the  Company  simply  a  bloodsucker,  a  worthless 
parasite  on  the  native  organization  ?      This  is   the  view 

1  Mem.,  76. 

2  The  fear  expressed  by  the  directors,  in  the  extract  in  De  Reus,  NOC, 
228,  that  the  Javanese  might  become  rich,  is  found  not  once  but  many- 
times  in  their  instructions.  It  is  a  parallel  to  the  opinion  of  a  Javanese 
prince  that  if  the  natives  had  more  than  the  necessaries  of  life,  they  would 
use  the  surplus  to  do  some  harm  to  their  rulers.  IJsseldijk,  Bedenkingen, 
1800,  Eindr.  2,  Bijl.  MM.,  p.  162.  »  Java,  2  :  250. 


124  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

taken  by  some  students,  who  find  not  a  single  ground  to 
extenuate  tlie  Company's  existence  in  Java.^  This  view 
is  imperfect ;  it  does  not  see  past  the  swarm  of  abuses 
which  made  up  the  Company's  rule  to  one  great  benefit 
which  was  in  itself  enough  to  compensate  for  everything. 
This  benefit  was  peace. ^  The  Company  would  tolerate 
pretty  nearly  everything  in  the  way  of  direct  oppression, 
but  the  instinct  of  self-preservation  forbade  it  to  tolerate 
useless  wars.  These  wars  had  been  the  greatest  curse  of 
the  native  organization,  and  the  end  of  them  was  not  in 
sight  when  the  Dutch  arrived.  A  great  empire  which 
had  been  built  up  by  the  wars  was  falling  by  more  wars, 
because  it  represented  no  real  advance  in  the  native 
civilization  and  ruled  only  through  the  sword.  The 
Dutch  did  little,  truly,  to  diminish  war  as  they  extended 
the  lines  of  their  political  influence,  but  within  those 
lines  they  maintained  a  peace  that  had  not  been  dreamed 
of  before. 

I  would  not  lay  great  stress  on  such  statements  as  that 
made  by  a  Dutch  governor  in  1792,^  that  the  natives  pre- 
ferred to  live  in  the  districts  more  immediately  subject  to 
the  Dutch  rather  than  under  the  more  independent  native 
governments.  This  was  doubtless  true  under  certain 
conditions,  but  it  is  offset  by  the  fact  that  the  natives 
were  constantly  emigrating  from  the  Dutch  districts  to 
escape   the   oppressions  which  they  suffered  there.*     As 

1  SoPierson,  KP.,  5. 

2  Cf.  Yeth,  Java,  2  :  239  ;  M.  L.  van  Deventer,  Gesch.,  2  :  193.  Van 
Deventer,  however,  seems  to  me  to  confuse  the  prosperity  of  the  people 
and  the  prosperity  of  the  Company,  two  very  different  things. 

8  Van  Overstraten  to  Governor  General,  Jonge,  Opk.,  12  :  295. 
*  I  have  referred  above  to  the  emigrations  caused  by  the  demands  for 
contingents  ;  they  were  not  at  all  uncommon.    The  Company's  policy  of 


in  THE   EAST   INDIA  COMPANY:   GOVERNMENT  125 

has  been  shown  above,  the  Dutch  did  little  to  remedy 
some  of  the  worst  abuses  of  the  native  government  and 
even  intensified  them  sometimes. 

In  spite  of  all,  taking  Dutch  and  native  Java  together, 
there  was  an  improvement  in  the  condition  of  the  natives 
in  the  latter  part  of  the  eighteenth  century.  This  im- 
provement, which  can  be  attributed  to  no  other  influence 
than  that  of  the  Dutch,  is  proved  by  the  great  increase  in 
population.  Raffles  had  no  love  for  his  predecessors,  and 
he  knew  that  they  had  in  some  districts  kept  down  popu- 
lation by  their  exactions,  but  he  was  forced  to  admit  that 
under  them  the  population  as  a  whole  had  grown  greatly 
before  his  arrival. ^  In  the  period  before  1755  wars,  with 
their  disastrous  effects  on  population  and  production,  had 
been  almost  constant.  The  Dutcli  were  partly  respon- 
sible for  these  wars  but  not  wholly ;  the  natives  would 
have  fought  about  as  bitterly  without  them.  In  the 
period  of  peace  that  followed  the  population  increased  in 
nearly  all  the  great  sections  of  the  island  and  in  some 
parts  of  it  doubled. ^  A  change  of  this  kind  does  not 
imply  necessarily  the  highest  kind  of  progress  or  an 
absence  of  all  abuses.     It  does  not  absolve  the  Company 


recruiting  soldiers  led  to  a  general  emigration  from  Madoera.  Cf.  Reis  van 
Engelhardt,  1803,  Opk.,  13  :  153,  The  eastern  part  of  Java,  which  on  the 
whole  owed  all  its  prosperity  to  the  Company,  was  hurt  toward  the  close 
of  the  century  by  the  frequent  demands  for  military  service  and  showed  a 
decline  in  population,  Opk.,  13 :  194.  All  the  evidence  which  I  have  seen 
supports  Van  der  Lith,  De  Gids,  1888,  3  :  369,  in  his  contention  that  M.  L. 
van  Deventer  goes  too  far  in  his  estimate  of  the  positive  benefits  conferred 
by  the  Company. 

1  Hist.,  1  :  70  ff. 

2  For  figures  and  details  see  M.  L.  van  Deventer,  Gesch.,  2:  232,  307  ; 
De  Jonge,  Opk.,  12:290,  532;  13:95,  99,  181.  Crawford  thought  that 
the  population  tripled  from  1740  to  1810  ;  Hist.  Ind,  Arch.,  2  :  430. 


126  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap,  in 

for  all  it  did  and  all  it  left  undone.  If,  however,  we 
judge  the  Dutch  East  India  Company,  not  by  the  Euro- 
pean standard,  but  by  the  low  standard  of  primitive 
political  organization,  this  one  fact,  the  growth  of  the 
native  population,  seems  to  me  to  justify  its  existence  as 
a  government. 


CHAPTER  IV 

JAVA  AFTER  THE  FALL  OF  THE  COMPANY 

[Note.  — The  collection  of  De  Jonge  has  been  continued,  covering  the 
history  down  to  1820,  by  M.  L.  van  Deventer  ;  elaborate  introductions  by 
the  editor  furnish  valuable  summary  and  criticism.  For  the  reorganiza- 
tion by  the  Dutch  State  after  the  fall  of  the  Company,  the  writings  of  Dirk 
van  HogendoriD,  and  the  report  and  charter  of  1803,  in  Mijer's  "  Verzamel- 
ing,"  are  important. 

The  chief  sources  for  the  period  of  British  rule,  beside  those  contained 
in  the  continuation  of  De  Jonge,  are  the  "  Memoirs  "  of  Raffles,  consisting 
largely  of  extracts  from  his  letters,  of  which  the  edition  of  1830,  in  one 
volume,  is  preferable,  and  the  documents  collected  in  Raffles's  "  Substance 
of  a  Minute."  S.  van  Deventer's  "  Bijdragen  tot  de  Kennis  van  het 
Landelijk  Stelsel "  contains  some  matertal  on  the  period  of  British  rule, 
and  is  one  of  the  chief  sources  for  the  period  of  the  Dutch  restoration. 
Elout's  "  Bijdragen  "  supplements  this  in  some  points. 

The  best  secondary  authority  on  the  British  period  is  Norman.  H.  E. 
Egerton,  "Sir  Stamford  Raffles,"  London,  1900,  is  less  full  and  less 
accurate.  Three  chapters  of  Pierson's  "  Koloniale  Politiek,"  are  given  \ 
to  the  history  of  Java,  from  Raffles  to  the  introduction  of  the  culture 
system  ;  this  book  can  be  heartily  recommended  as  an  introduction  to 
the  study  of  Dutch  policy.] 

TT  is  hard  to  imagine  a  sharper  contrast  than  that  shown 
by  the  history  of  Java  during  the  two  centuries  of  the 
Company's  rule  and  during  the  century  which  has  suc- 
ceeded. The  peculiar  powers  given  to  the  Company  were 
exercised  with  an  exclusiveness  and  a  secrecy  that  pro- 
tected it  from  the  forces  making  toward  progress  in  the 
world  about  it,  and  kept  it  encysted,  as  it  were,  in  the 
developing  life  of  the  times.  The  Company's  rule  was 
marked  by  an  obstinate  adherence  to  old  forms  of  policy 

127 


128  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

and  administration  which  did  not  preclude  all  change, 
but  which  made  change  when  it  did  come  so  gradual  as 
to  be  barely  noticeable.  The  decline  of  the  Company 
was  slow,  and  its  fall  was  itself  not  a  sharp  break,  but  a 
succession  of  changes  in  which  the  Company's  powers 
passed  piecemeal  to  the  State. 

Java  was  brought  thus  first  into  contact  with  the  public 
life  of  Europe  at  the  very  period  when  the  French  Revo- 
lution and  the  rise  of  Napoleon  were  causing  there  the 
most  violent  changes.  The  Dutch  government  which  as- 
sumed control  of  the  East  Indies  was  no  longer  that  of  the 
Princes  of  Orange  but  that  of  the  Batavian  Republic,  and 
the  Governor  General  who  first  brought  to  Java  the  new 
spirit  of  the  times  addressed  his  despatches  to  the  minister 
of  King  Louis  Napoleon  or  to  the  great  Emperor  himself. 
United  with  France  by  the  fortunes  of  war  and  politics 
in  Europe,  the  Dutch  colonies  were  exposed  defenceless  to 
Great  Britain,  and  among  the  last  of  the  British  conquests 
was  that  of  Java.  For  five  years  the  island  was  ruled  as 
a  dependency  of  British  India  by  an  Englishman,  Raffles, 
who  attempted  in  that  brief  interval  to  effect  changes 
in  the  governing  system  that  amounted  to  a  revolution. 
His  work  was  scarcely  more  than  begun,  when  the  island 
was  transferred  again  to  the  Dutch ;  but  enough  had  been 
accomplished  to  serve  as  an  incitement  to  further  change, 
and  to  prevent  a  complete  reversion  to  the  old  system. 
During  the  first  period  of  the  Dutch  restoration  Java  was 
managed  on  a  mixed  system  in  which  the  traditional 
methods  of  the  East  India  Company  were  employed  to 
exploit  it  for  the  benefit  of  the  crown.  Then  followed 
the  culture  system.  The  revolutionary  movement  of  1848 
in  Europe  brought  Java  for  the  first  time  under  the  con- 


IV  JAVA  AFTER   THE  FALL   OF  THE  COIVIPANY  129 

trol  of  the  representatives  of  the  Dutch  people,  and  the 
result  has  been  to  stimulate  changes  so  extensive  that  the 
sum  of  them  in  the  last  fifty  years  counts  for  more  than 
the  total  development  of  the  preceding  time. 

While  it  seemed  proper,  in  the  brief  compass  of  this 
book,  to  treat  the  period  of  the  East  India  Company  as  a 
unit,  and  to  discuss  the  different  features  of  the  Com- 
pany's policy  and  administration  under  a  topical  arrange- 
ment, a  similar  method  is  clearly  inapplicable  to  the 
history  of  Java  in  the  nineteenth  century,  and  a  division 
into  periods  is  necessary.  I  shall  discuss  first  the  princi- 
ples adopted  by  the  Dutch  State  after  the  abolition  of  the 
Company,  and  the  application  of  these  principles  in  Java 
down  to  the  time  of  the  British  conquest. 

On  one  point  there  was  general  agreement  among  the 
Dutch.  The  object  of  every  policy  suggested  was  the  wel- 
fare of  the  Netherlands.  Individuals  advocated  changes 
in  one  point  or  another  of  the  system  that  the  Company 
had  pursued,  and  demanded  reforms  of  the  various  abuses 
which  the  Javanese  had  suffered  under  the  old  system, 
but  they  based  all  claims  for  change  on  the  interests  of  the 
Dutch  themselves.  Amelioration  of  the  condition  of  the 
natives,  wrote  one  of  the  representatives  of  the  reform 
party,  "  though  undoubtedly  a  consideration  of  the  highest 
moment  in  the  eyes  of  humanity,  seems  to  me  to  become 
only  a  secondary  object  in  a  political  point  of  view ;  and, 
with  the  exception  of  every  measure  contrary  to  the  prin- 
ciples of  justice  and  equity,  it  appears  to  me  that  the 
safest  principle  which  can  be  adopted,  to  judge  of  the 
propriety  of  any  colonial  regulations,  or  of  any  changes 
and  alterations  to  be  introduced  therein,  is,  that  every 
colony  does  -or   ought   to   exist   for   the   benefit   of   the 


130  THE  DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

Vi  mother-country."!  There  appears,  however,  in  the  dis- 
cussions of  the  times  a  broader  and  clearer  judgment  of 
what  the  Dutch  interests  were,  and  an  appreciation  of 
the  fact  that  they  could  never  really  diverge  from  the 
interests  of  the  subject  people.  A  new  element,  that 
of  permanence,  had  been  introduced  into  the  relations 
between  Dutch  and  natives  by  the  substitution  of  the 
Dutch  State  for  the  Company.  No  corporation,  not  even 
one  so  powerful  and  long-lived  as  the  Dutch  East  India 
Company,  can  look  ahead  as  does  a  government  which 
expects  to  endure  as  long  as  the  people  that  made  it. 
The  Company  had  sinned  constantly  by  its  devotion  to 
momentary  gains,  at  the  expense  of  the  welfare  of  the 
people  and  the  permanence  of  its  own  prosperity.  The 
principle  of  solidarity  of  interests  was  now  explicitly 
recognized,  and  what  we  should  call  departures  from  its 
application  were  all  excused  on  one  pretext  or  another. ^ 

It  was  one  thing,  however,  to  unite  on  certain  general 
principles  of  action,  and  another  to  decide  how  they  should 
be  carried  out  in  concrete  form.  The  government  was  faced 
by  the  peculiar  union  of  commercial  and  political  functions 

1  Raffles,  Sub.,  280,  Minute  of  Muntinghe,  1813;  he  expressed  the 
same  idea  in  his  report  of  1817;  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  1:  284.  I  find 
substantially  the  same  idea  expressed  in  the  Report  of  the  Commission  of 
1803,  which  fixed  the  Dutch  policy,  and  even  in  the  proposals  of  the  two 
Hogendorps,  who  represent  the  extreme  reform  element  before  1800. 

2  Cf.  Consideratien  of  Wiese,  1802,  Opk.,  13:52,  urging  the  govern- 
ment to  establish  a  political  system  that  could  be  permanent  by  making 
the  interests  and  duties  of  officials  coincide.  Muntinghe,  Report,  1817, 
S.  van  Deventer,  LS. ,  1 :  331,  emphasized  the  necessity  of  adopting  a  sys- 
tem that  would  be  suited  to  Java  when  the  population  had  increased  two 
or  three  fold.  Recognition  of  the  union  of  interests  of  Dutch  and  natives 
appears  often  in  the  important  report  and  charter  of  1803,  though  the  re- 
port advocated  a  policy  which  was  destined  in  the  long  run  to  cause  the 
natives  to  be  exploited  by  their  rulers. 


IT  JAVA   AFTER   THE  FALL   OF  THE   COxMPANY  131 

ill  the  Company,  and  found  its  great  difficulty  in  deciding 
what  attitude  it  should  take  toward  this  combination. 
During  the  time  of  the  Company's  decline,  from  1780  on, 
the  general  feeling  was  that  it  must  be  maintained  at  any 
cost,  certainly  that  the  trade  monopoly  which  it  enjoyed 
must  be  continued  ;  there  was  no  thought  of  throwing  the 
trade  open  to  individuals.^  Should  the  government  now 
itself  exercise  this  trade  monopoly  as  the  Company  had 
done,  or  should  it  maintain  the  monopoly  in  favor  of 
another  Company  erected  on  the  ruins  of  the  old  one  ? 
Should  it  continue  the  Company's  political  sj^stem,  based 
on  government  through  the  native  organization  and  on 
contingents,  or  should  it,  freed  entirely  from  commercial 
considerations,  cease  to  demand  the  delivery  of  specified 
articles,  break  away  from  its  dependence  on  native  rulers, 
and  assume  the  direct  government  of  the  mass  of  the  peo- 
ple ?  The  conflict  between  the  different  functions  of  the 
Company  had  long  been  realized  by  enlightened  officials, 
and  was  recognized  at  this  time  even  by  those  who  pro- 
posed that  the  state  should  continue  the  Company's 
system  ;  I  find  the  best  expression  of  it,  however,  in  the 
report  of  a  Dutch  official,  Muntinghe,  a  few  years  later,  and 
use  that  as  a  basis  for  a  general  discussion  of  the  question." 
Muntinghe  distinguished  two  systems,  one  of  trade 
{stelsel  van  handel)^  one  of  taxation  (stelsel  van  helasting^. 
The  system  of  trade  was  essentially  that  of  the  East  India 
Company,  in  which  the  sovereign  was  also  a  merchant, 
and  the  government  was  ruled  by  a  spirit  of  commer- 

1  Colenbrander,  Frankrijk,  De  Gids,  1899,  1  :  459.  He  says  that  in  all 
the  literature  of  the  period  there  was  scarcely  an  opinion  to  the  contrary. 
Cf.  Frank,  Ind.  Gids,  1888,  2  :  1856. 

2  Rapport  van  Mr.  H.  W.  Muntinghe,  1817,  S.  van  Deventer,  LS., 
1  : 282-283. 


132  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

cialism,  the  only  object  of  the  Company  being  to  secure 
certain  wares  for  the  European  market.  It  required  the 
delivery  of  products  at  less  than  the  market  price  and 
could  get  these  only  by  forced  labor  ;  to  secure  the  requi- 
site amount  of  labor  it  had  to  work  through  the  native 
organization,  maintaining  the  regents  in  their  authority, 
and  permitting  them  to  abuse  the  people  at  will.  Under 
such  an  arrangement  a  regular  government  and  a  regular 
system  of  taxation,  assuring  the  liberty  of  persons  and  the 
security  of  property,  were  impossible. 

A  system  of  taxation,  on  the  other  hand,  was  to  Mun- 
tinghe  one  in  which  the  government  considered  the  wel- 
fare of  the  people  as  the  prime  condition  of  its  existence, 
sought  to  further  their  welfare  by  giving  them  the  greatest 
freedom  in  the  use  of  their  time  for  cultivation  and  in  the 
disposal  of  their  products,  and  protected  them  from  every 
abuse  of  person  and  property  by  their  native  rulers.  The 
government  then  would  share  in  the  prosperity  of  the 
natives  by  the  imposition  of  just  taxes  which  they  would 
easily  be  able  to  pay. 

In  the  choice  between  these  two  systems  as  they  are  thus 
presented,  there  seems  little  reason  for  hesitation.  The 
system  of  taxation  harmonizes  so  thoroughly  with  modern 
ideas,  and  with  the  lessons  that  can  be  read  from  the  his- 
tory of  our  political  progress  that  it  seems  the  only  course 
for  the  Dutch  government  to  follow.  The  English  East 
India  Company  had,  moreover,  during  the  last  half  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  made  very  rapid  approaches  to  this 
system.  Though  it  is  clear  that  the  English  Company  had 
a  system  something  like  that  of  the  Dutch  contingents,^ 

1  Compare  the  description  by  Hunter,  "  Annals  of  Rural  Bengal," 
second  ed.,  N.Y.,  1868,  352,  of  the  weaving  villages;  it  appears  from 
other  passages  that  the  labor  in  these  villages  was  forced. 


IV      JAVA  AFTER  THE  FALL  OF  THE  COMPANY     133 

revenue  from  this  source  seems  never  to  have  been  a  very 
important  item  in  their  receipts.  They  made  most  of 
their  income,  after  the  grant  of  the  devvanee,  from  the 
native  taxes,  which  they  collected  at  first  through  native 
officials,  but  which  they  had  begun  to  reform  and  to  ad- 
minister themselves  before  the  end  of  the  century.  The 
Dutch  knew  of  these  changes  and  had  an  idea  of  the  profit 
that  the  British  had  made  by  them.^ 

The  man  who  did  most  to  rouse  public  discussion  on  the 
question  of  reorganization  and  to  direct  attention  to  the 
advantages  of  the  tax  system  Avas  a  former  servant  of 
the  Company,  Dirk  van  Hogendorp.  A  younger  brother, 
G.  K.  van  Hogendorp,  had  as  early  as  1795  published  a 
memorial  urging  reform  in  the  colonial  systems  in  both 
East  and  West  Indies,  and  remarkable  for  the  bold  proposal 
that  the  State  should  maintain  only  the  exclusive  right  to 
trade,  and  should  give  up  most  of  its  governing  functions. 
The  argument  was  that  the  main  benefit  from  a  colony 
was  its  trade,  and  that  trade  would  be  greatest  when 
the  colony  was  most  free  from  interference  ;  a  free  man 
works  more  than  a  slave,  he  produces  more  and  consumes 
more,  and  therefore  freedom  would  stimulate  commerce. 
Consequently  G.  K.  van  Hogendorp  maintained  that  the 
government  would  do  best  to  give  up  its  extensive  terri- 
torial possessions  in  the  East  Indies,  with  its  restrictive 
political  system,  and  maintain  there  only  staple  ports  with 
forts  and  warehouses.^     We  may  ascribe  these  proposals 

1  Muntinghe  says  that  after  the  impossibility  of  reforming  the  Dutch 
Company  on  the  old  plan  of  monopoly  was  apparent  (1796),  "the  institu- 
tions of  British  India  .  .  .  were  generally  held  out  as  a  model  for  the 
future  regulations  of  Java."     Minute,  1813,  Raffles,  Sub.,  282. 

2  Kalff,  "  G.  K.  van  Hogendorp,"  Ind.  Gids,  1886, 2  :  1779ff.  "  Javafor  the 
Javanese,"  says  Kalff,  who  draws  attention  to  the  fact  that  Raffles  had  the 
same  revolutionary  ideas  before  he  had  the  responsibility  of  ruling  Java. 


134  THE   DUTCH   IN  JAVA  chap. 

of  G.  K.  van  Hogendorp,  who  had  no  practical  knowledge 
of  the  colonial  question,  to  the  influence  of  the  political 
ideas  of  the  French  Revolution  ;  they  received  no  serious 
consideration. 

With  the  older  brother,  Dirk  van  Hogendorp,  the  case 
was  different.  He  had  gone  out  to  Java  in  1784  and  had 
been  in  the  military  and  civil  service  of  the  Company  for 
nearly  fifteen  years,  holding  the  office  of  resident  both  on 
the  continent  and  in  Java.  He  had  risen  to  the  position 
of  Governor  of  the  eastern  extremity  of  Java,  when  his 
vigorous  ideas  on  the  abuses  of  the  Company's  system  and 
the  need  of  reforming  it  involved  him  in  trouble  with  the 
government  ;  he  was  arrested,  escaped  to  British  India, 
and  returned  to  the  Netherlands.  On  the  return  voyage 
he  wrote  a  "  Report  on  the  Present  Condition  of  the  Bata- 
vian  Possessions,"  which  was  published  at  the  end  of  1799, 
and  which  caused,  it  is  said,  more  excitement  at  home  than 
was  roused  by  the  appearance  of  "  Max  Havelaar  "  in  the 
period  of  the  culture  system. ^  There  is  a  question  as  to 
the  influence  that  Van  Hogendorp  had  in  fixing  the  policy 
adopted  by  the  government  in  the  charter  of  1803,  but 
there  can  be  no  question  as  to  his  importance  in  stimu- 
lating the  discussion  that  led  up  to  the  charter. ^  He 
j)resented  facts,  hitherto  concealed,  about  the  workings 
of  the  Company's  system  in  Java,  and  proposed  in  substi- 

1  Frank,  "  Dirk  van  Hogendorp,"  Ind.  Gids,  1888,  2  :  1688.  For  the  facts 
cited  see  this  article  and  Sillem,  "Dirk  van  Hogendorp." 

2  Frank,  I.e.,  pp.  1680,  1864,  and  Sillem,  347  ff.,  361,  are  inclined  to 
magnify  the  influence  of  Dirk  van  Hogendorp.  Grashuis,  "  Het  Charter 
van  Nederburgh,"  Ind.  Gids,  1897,  2:  1253  ff.,  gives  most  of  the  credit 
for  the  charter  to  Nederburgh,  though  he  admits  that  some  of  Van  Hogen- 
dorp's  ideas  are  embodied  in  it.  His  view,  that  Van  Hogendorp  was 
rather  an  agitator  than  a  legislator,  seems  a  fair  one. 


IV     JAVA  AFTER  THE  FALL  OF  THE  COMPANY     135 

tution  for  it  a  new  system  which  he  could  defend  by 
arguments  drawn  from  his  own  experience  in  Java  and 
in  continental  India. ^ 

Van  Hogendorp  found  the  great  weakness  of  the  Com- 
pany's system  to  be  the  way  in  which  the  Company 
exercised  its  governing  functions.  In  a  previous  chapter 
I  have  quoted  his  description  of  the  "  feudal "  system  by 
which  contingents  were  raised.  The  result  of  this  system 
was  such  oppression  of  the  mass  of  the  people  that  they 
could  be  said  to  have  no  rights  of  person  or  property  and 
no  interest  in  improving  their  position.  Neither  Company 
nor  State  could  hope  to  make  a  success  of  the  possession 
of  Java  until  it  had  remedied  this  condition  of  affairs. 
"  Self-interest  is  the  only  motive  which  can  stimulate  a 
man  to  activity,  and  since  the  Javanese  has  and  can  have 
no  interest  in  working  and  cultivating  the  land  more  than 
he  has  to  for  the  necessities  of  his  existence,  Java  will 
never  attain  to  the  prosperity  which  its  fertility  would 
otherwise  admit,  unless  some  means  be  found  to  interest 
the  Javanese  in  agriculture." 

"  In  my  opinion  the  best  means  to  this  end  would  be  to 
transfer  the  lands  to  the  common  people,  in  property  or 
on  hereditary  lease,  as  the  English  have  tried  to  do  in 
Bengal  with  great  success,  and  to  abolish  all  forced  ser- 

^  The  original  text  of  the  "  Berigt"  came  into  my  hands  too  late  to 
allow  me  to  use  it  for  citation.  The  same  ideas,  however,  are  found  in 
the  "  Schets  of  Proeve  oven  den  tegenwoordigen  staat  van  Java,  en  ont- 
werp  tot  verbetering  van  dies  bestier,"  written  presumably  in  1799  and 
published  in  Eind.,  2:  Bijl.  LL.,  pp.  152  ff.,  and  in  the  "  Nadere  Uit- 
legging,"  published  in  1802,  in  answer  to  an  attack  by  Nederburgh  on 
the  report.  I  cannot  enter  into  all  the  details  of  Hogendorp's  proposals ; 
they  can  be  found  summarized  in  Wiese's  report,  1802,  Jonge,  Opk., 
13:45,  110.  The  summary  which  I  give  in  the  text  is  taken  from  the 
"  Schets." 


136  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

vices.  The  regents,  with  their  families  and  followers, 
would  lose  most  by  this,  but  Solus  Populi  Swprema  Lex; 
the  general  welfare  must  be  preferred  to  the  interest  of  a 
few.  We  can,  however,  provide  a  fair  compensation  for 
the  regents  by  setting  aside  for  them  annually  from  the 
general  taxes  a  fixed  money  salary  and  some  measures  of 
rice  for  their  maintenance." 

"  We  should  then  be  able  to  introduce  a  general  tax  in 
kind  on  the  land  and  a  poll-tax  on  persons.  On  the 
other  hand  the  people  would  be  permanently  freed  from 
all  forced  services,  personal  and  official." 

To  support  his  plan  Hogendorp  could  point  in  Java  to 
the  districts  that  had  been  farmed  out  to  the  Chinese. ^ 
When  these  people  had  acted  as  tax-farmers  on  a  small 
scale  for  the  native  rulers,  they  had  been  guilty  of  the 
worst  extortions,  and  had  caused  the  ruin  of  the  villages 
which  had  been  put  in  their  hands.  When,  however,  as 
was  the  case  in  some  parts  of  East  Java,  they  had  been 
given  considerable  districts,  which  they  held  for  a  long 
time  and  in  which  they  were  practically  regents,  they 
found  their  interests  to  coincide  with  a  reform  of  the 
native  institutions  rather  than  an  abuse  of  them.  They 
acted  like  sensible  capitalists  on  business  principles  ; 
they  freed  the  people  from  arbitrary  demands  on  their 
time,  paying  them  for  whatever  services  were  asked,  and 
required  from  them  only  a  certain  proportion  of  their 
crops.  The  proportion  might  seem  high,  but  it  was  fixed, 
and  as  long  as  the  people  paid  it  they  were  secure  in  the 
enjoyment  of  the  surplus,  and  were  granted  even  the 
right  to  hereditary  transmission  of  the  land.  The  result 
had  been  to  attract  people  from  all  the  surrounding  coun- 
1  Nad.  Uitl.,  57-58  ;  Schets,  153. 


IV     JAVA  AFTER  THE  FALL  OF  THE  COMPANY     137 

try,  so  that  these  districts  were  the  most  thickly  popu- 
lated and  the  best  cultivated  in  Java.^  Van  Hogendorp 
thought  that  by  extending  a  similar  policy  to  all  Java,  it 
would  be  possible  to  get  by  a  tax  perhaps  one-tenth  of  the 
crop,  more  than  the  Company  was  then  securing  by 
means  vastly  more  burdensome  to  the  people. ^ 

To  enable  the  natives  to  meet  their  taxes  they  were  to 
be  granted  greater  freedom  of  cultivation  and  trade, 
though  the  commercial  system  which  Van  Hogendorp  ad- 
vocated was,  in  regard  to  external  commerce,  far  from 
deserving  the  title  of  "  free  trade  "  that  he  gave  it.  The 
State  was  not  to  conduct  the  trade  between  Java  and 
the  Netherlands  as  formerly,  but  was  to  allow  this  to  be 
carried  on  by  Dutch  merchants,  and,  under  special  restric- 
tions, even  by  the  citizens  of  other  nations.  Trade  with 
China  and  Japan  was  not,  however,  to  be  thrown  open, 
the  spice  trade  was  still  to  be  kept  a  strict  government 
monopoly,  and,  a  provision  curiously  inconsistent  with 
the  general  tendency  of  the  reform,  the  forced  deliveries 
were  to  be  maintained.^ 

This  plan  of  Dirk  van  Hogendorp,  if  we  exclude  some 
of  its  inconsistencies  and  restrictive  provisions,  represents 
pretty  exactly  the  platform  of  the  liberal  political  element 

1  Van  Overstraten  to  Governor  General,  1793,  Opk.,  12  :  315  ;  Verslag 
van  IJsseldijk,  1799,  i&.,  12:548;  Reis  van  Engelhardt  (with  fullest 
details),  1803,  ib.,  13  :  182  ff.;  Hopkins's  Report  (permanence  of  tenure), 
1814,  Raffles,  Sub.,  103.  A  general  discussion  of  the  Chinese  districts 
can  be  found  in  M.  L.  van  Deventer,  2  :  297  ff. ;  Veth,  Java,  2  :  239  ff.  The 
history  of  the  Chinese  districts  seems  to  me  an  extremely  suggestive 
example  of  the  benefit  that  the  application  of  intelligent  self-interest, 
apart  from  any  humanitarian  motives,  can  sometimes  confer  on  a  corrupt 
political  organization. 

2Nad.  Uitl.,  50. 

2  lb.,  33  ff.;  scheme  of  government,  paragraphs  3,  6,  7,  20,  21. 


138  THE   DUTCH   IN  JAVA  chap. 

in  the  Netherlands  in  the  latter  part  of  the  nineteenth 
century.  It  has  not  yet  been  realized  in  its  completeness, 
and  it  was  so  far  in  advance  of  the  times  when  it  was  pro- 
posed, that  its  adoption  and  practical  application  were 
out  of  the  question.  The  reasons  will  appear  on  review- 
ing some  of  the  objections  that  it  called  forth  in  India  and 
the  Netherlands  ;  I  shall  cite  first  from  the  reports  of 
three  prominent  officials  in  India  to  whom  the  report  had 
been  submitted  by  the  home  government  with  a  request 
for  their  opinions.^ 

While  these  officials  recognized  the  existence  of  abuses 
in  Java  and  the  need  of  reforms,  they  were  unanimous  in 
opposing  the  adoption  of  Hogendorp's  plan.  Some  of  the 
objections  were  of  little  weight,  as  one,  for  instance,  com- 
monly brought  forward  at  this  time,  that  a  greater  free- 
dom of  trade  would  by  competition  lead  to  a  rise  in  prices 
by  which  the  native  would  benefit  but  not  the  govern- 
ment. Of  more  importance  was  the  objection  that  the 
change  which  Van  Hogendorp  advocated  was  so  radical 
that  it  amounted  to  a  revolution,  attempting  to  accom- 
plish in  a  day  what  would  require  generations  for  its  ful- 
filment. Van  Hogendorp,  said  the  officials,  described 
the  common  Javanese  as  a  slave,  and  then  proposed  to 
bestow  on  him  all  at  once  full  freedom  of  person  and  prop- 
erty. What  guarantee  was  there  that  the  native  would 
appreciate  and  use  properly  the  rights  conferred  upon 
him  ?  He  was  notoriously  lazy  and  shiftless  ;  if  he  were 
released  from  the  pressure  exerted  on  him  through  the 
rulers  of  his  own  race,  would  he  not  stop  working  alto- 

iOpk.,vol.  13,  "Adviezen  oratrent  het  Bericht  van  D.  van  Hogen- 
dorp ; "  Governor  General  Siberg,  p.  39  ff.  ;  Director  General  van  Wiese, 
43  ff.  ;  Councillor  van  IJsseldijk,  109  ff. 


IV  JAVA  AFTER    THE   FALL  OF   THE   COMPANY  139 

gether,  perhaps  sell  the  land  that  had  been  given  him  and 
finally  sink  into  a  worse  condition  of  dependence  even  than 
that  which  he  had  occupied  before  ?  Men  must  be  ripe  for 
a  change  to  make  it  effective. ^ 

It  might  seem  that  Van  Hogendorp  could  have  made 
a  valid  answer  to  their  objection  by  referring  to  the  taxes 
which  he  proposed  to  introduce.  Would  not  the  native 
be  forced  by  them  to  work,  as  he  had  formerly  been  made 
to  work  to  supply  the  regent's  contingents  ?  The  native 
would  still  be  responsible  for  certain  payments,  though  he 
would  make  them  directly  to  the  government  and  not  to 
the  native  rulers.  Here  comes  in  the  decisive  objection, 
the  difficulty  which  made  Hogendorp's  proposal  fruitless 
and  which  was  destined  to  wreck  schemes  of  a  similar 
kind  long  afterwards.  The  government  could  not  do 
without  the  native  rulers,  and  with  them  it  could  accom- 
plish no  reform  that  implied  a  complete  change  in  all  the 
native  customs  of  government.  The  government  could 
call  the  forced  deliveries  a  tax,  and  it  did  that;  Wiese 
wrote  that  the  contingent  "  can  and  must  be  considered  a 
land-tax."  2  So  long,  however,  as  the  contingent  was  ad- 
ministered exactly  as  before,  subject  to  the  same  abuses, 
there  was  no  gain  in  a  change  of  name.  Van  Hogendorp 
seems  to  have  realized  that  it  was  this  question  of  admin- 
istration which  formed  the  flaw  in  his  scheme,  and  did 
what  he  could  to  obviate  the  difficulty.  He  proposed  that 
the  European  government  should  interfere  with  native 
institutions  as  little  as  possible,  that  it  should  retain  not 

1  L.c,  40,  45.  It  should  be  noted  that  Van  Wiese,  in  the  very  report  in 
■which  he  ridicules  the  idea  of  free  labor  existing  in  Java,  gives  an  example 
of  it ;  of.  p.  95.  Labor  on  the  Chinese  lands  also  was  free.  Muntinghe 
gives  other  examples  afterwards.     S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  1  :  289. 

^L.c.p.  60. 


140  THE  DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

only  institutions  but  native  officials,  so  far  as  was  rendered 
advisable  by  the  customs,  the  feelings,  even  the  prejudices 
of  the  people.^  The  "only"  changes  were  to  be  the  in- 
troduction of  assured  individual  property  rights  and  an 
equitable  system  of  taxation.  These  modest  changes 
went  to  the  very  root  of  government.  Even  for  the  be- 
ginning of  his  system,  which  he  meant  should  be  intro- 
duced carefully,  he  wanted  a  census  of  population  and  a 
cadastral  survey  of  the  land.^  The  Director  General 
asked  ^  who  was  going  to  attend  to  the  allotment  of  four 
hundred  thousand  pieces  of  land,  scattered  over  an  area 
far  exceeding  that  of  the  Netherlands  ;  and  to  that  ques- 
tion there  was  no  answer. 

To  the  Indian  officials  the  question  of  reform  was  not 
one  to  be  settled  by  abstract  reasoning,  but  by  a  consider- 
ation of  the  actual  conditions  in  Java,  especially  the  char- 
acter of  the  people  and  their  customs  of  government. 
They  asked  that  the  specific  abuses  of  native  rule  should 
be  stopped,  but  they  thought  that  the  attempt  to  abolish 
the  "feudal  system"  was  impracticable;  assuming  that 
it  was  retained,  they  thought  that  the  contingent  system 
was  the  simplest  and  most  desirable  way  of  raising  the 
revenue,  and  regarded  a  monopoly  in  the  export  trade  as 
thereby  rendered  necessary.* 

Whether  the  reports  of  these  Indian  officials  had  any 
influence  in  determining  the  line  of  policy  followed  by 
the  Dutch  does  not  appear.  By  a  decree  of  November  11, 
1803,  the  government  of  the  Batavian  Republic  had  estab- 
lished a  commission  of  six  persons,  to  report  how  "in 
the  country's  possessions  in  East  India,  trade  should  be 

1  Nad.  Uitl.,  34,  49,  68.  2  76.,  59.  »  Opk.,  13 :  50. 

*Ib.,  13:  58,  97. 


IV  JAVA  AFTER   THE   FALL  OF   THE   COMPANY  141 

pursued  and  the  possessions  governed,  that  there  may  be 
assured  to  thera  the  highest  possible  degree  of  welfare, 
to  the  trade  of  the  Republic  the  greatest  advantage,  and 
to  the  country's  finances  the  greatest  benefit."  ^  This 
commission  is  said  to  have  represented  fairly  the  different 
views  on  colonial  policy. ^  It  included  Dirk  van  Hogen- 
dorp,  and  another  former  colonial  official  who  had  been 
prominent  in  opposing  Hogendorp's  plan  ;  this  latter  man, 
Nederburgh,  is  responsible  for  the  wording  of  the  report 
and  charter  which  were  presented  in  August,  1803,  and  is 
credited  with  tlie  greatest  influence  in  fixing  the  form 
they  took. 3 

The  commission  began  its  report  with  the  question  of 
trade,  not  of  government,  regarding  the  question  of  gov- 
ernment as  one  to  be  settled  in  conformity  with  the 
commercial  policy  adopted.  We  have  in  this  fact  an 
index  of  the  emphasis  that  the  commission  laid  on  the 
various  parts  of  the  government's  instructions.  After 
reviewing  the  system  of  the  Company,  the  commission 
took  up  the  proposals  of  Van  Hogfindorp  and  rejected 
them  on  much  the  same  ground  as  that  taken  by  the 
Indian  oificials  whose  reports  are  cited  above.  It  believed 
that  it  was  impossible  to  allow  the  natives  freedom  in 
cultivation  and  in  the  disposal  of  their  products  without 
a  change  in  the  native  institutions  which  would  be  fol- 

1  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  1:5;  Mijer,  119,  225. 

2  Sillem,  "  Dirk  van  Hogendorp,"  112. 

2  The  summary  following  in  the  text  is  based  on  the  report  and 
charter  in  Mijer,  Verzameling,  117-261. 

It  is  worth  noting  that  Java  had  by  this  time  gained  an  importance 
far  exceeding  that  of  all  the  other  possessions.  Director  General  Wiese 
gave  in  his  report  forty-five  pages  to  .Java,  and  ten  to  the  other  islands  ; 
Nederburgh  had  Java  in  mind  especially  in  framing  the  charter,  and  gave  up 
almost  his  whole  report  to  that  island.  Cf.  Grashuis,  Ind.  Gids,  1897, 2 :  1266. 


142  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

lowed  by  consequences  most  dangerous  politically  as  well 
as  economically.  The  commission  recognized  that  a  con- 
dition of  free  trade  and  money  taxes  was  better  for  a  state 
than  the  system  of  forced  deliveries,  provided  it  could  be 
maintained,  but  if  the  change  were  attempted  in  Java,  it 
foresaw  only  a  decline  in  cultivation,  an  enormous  increase 
in  the  expense  of  salaries,  and  the  impossibility  of  cover- 
ing the  expense  by  taxation.  Instead  of  the  Dutch  peo- 
ple getting  any  benefit  from  their  Indian  possessions,  they 
would  have  to  make  up  a  deficit  there.  The  commission 
regarded  Van  Hogendorp's  argument  based  on  British 
India  as  of  no  weight  ;  it  asserted  that  Java  was  too  poor 
and  the  Javanese  too  backward  to  enable  such  reforms  as 
those  of  Cornwallis  to  be  carried  to  a  successful  conclu- 
sion in  the  island. ^  Our  task,  said  the  commission,  is  to 
investigate  what  ought  to  be  done  under  the  conditions  as 
they  actually  exist,  not  to  speculate  on  a  possible  future. 
It  quoted  "  the  excellent  author  of  the  well-known  work," 
"  The  Wealtli  of  Nations,"  to  show  that  the  principle  of 
freedom  of  trade  should  be  applied  cautiously  under  cer- 
tain circumstances,  and  recommended  accordingly  that  the 
contingents  of  the  most  important  articles  (coffee  and 
pepper)  should  be  maintained  under  such  regulation  as 
would  free  them  from  abuses.  It  raised  the  question 
whether  an  excess  of  coffee  and  pepper  over  the  amount 
demanded  by  government  could  be  left  to  be  disposed  of 
freely,  and  decided  that  the  dangers  from  smugglers  and 
engrossers  were  too  serious  ;  the  whole  amount  of  these 
products  must  be  delivered  to  the  government.  The 
sugar  trade,  on  the  other  hand,  was  to  be  made  free. 

1  The  commission  denied,  moreover,  that  the  British  had  made  profit 
by  their  change  to  a  tax  system.     Mijer,  138. 


IV  JAVA  AFTER  THE  FALL  OF   THE   COMPANY  143 

In  retaining  the  system  of  contingents  and  forced  deliv- 
eries, the  commission  took  a  step  that  decided  the  political 
relations  in  which  the  Dutch  government  was  to  stand  to 
the  natives.  The  State  was  freed  from  many  of  the  com- 
mercial responsibilities  of  the  Company,  as  will  be  shown 
immediately,  and  the  commission  proposed  that  it  should 
devote  its  energy  to  the  establishment  of  a  regular  gov- 
ernment. The  contingent  system  was  retained,  however, 
simply  to  secure  cooperation  of  native  rulers  and  to  make 
it  unnecessary  for  the  State  to  penetrate  far  into  the 
native  organization.  The  commission  believed  that  the 
Dutch  must  exercise  "rather  a  system  of  oversight  QBest- 
uur  van  Toevoorzicht)  than  a  direct  government,  —  so  that 
the  natives  will  be  left  to  the  authority  of  their  own 
rulers,  with  their  own  manners  and  customs,  under  their 
own  laws  and  legal  system."  The  government  was  to 
devote  itself  only  to  the  repression  of  abuses.  An  article 
of  the  charter  ordered  that  the  most  appropriate  measures 
be  taken  "  to  assure  and  to  improve  the  condition  of  the 
common  people,  to  abolish  all  irregular  and  arbitrary 
taxes,  and  to  stimulate  and  extend  cultivation  so  far  as 
possible,"  while  "  the  native  laws,  manners,  and  customs 
shall  be  maintained."  In  the  light  of  later  experience 
these  two  principles,  that  the  condition  of  the  common 
people  be  improved  and  yet  that  native  laws  and  customs 
be  upheld,  seem  inconsistent ;  but  no  serious  attempt  had 
up  to  this  time  been  made  to  reconcile  two  things  that 
proved  irreconcilable,  and  this  provision  may  have  been 
perfectly  sincere. 

In  regard  to  external  trade  the  charter  framed  by  the 
commission  abrogated  in  one  article  all  the  old  regu- 
lations.     "  With    a    few    exceptions,"    said    the    report, 


144  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chaf. 

"  prescribed  by  the  general  interests  of  the  country's  in- 
habitants themselves,  all  European  and  Indian  wares  are 
left  to  a  free  trade."  The  exceptions  were  based  on  fiscal 
and  social  reasons,  applying  to  government  products 
(coffee,  pepper,  spices),  firearms,  opium,  rice,  and  wood. 
Barring  commerce  in  these  prohibited  articles,  all  Dutch 
citizens  were  allowed  to  trade  throughout  the  East  Indies, 
subject  only  to  certain  staple  regulations  ;  and  ships  of 
friendly  powers  were  admitted  in  Batavia  and  other 
westerly  ports. ^  The  commission  discussed  several  dif- 
ferent systems  for  the  State  to  pursue  in  disposing  of 
the  products  that  came  to  it  as  contingents,  and  decided 
that  they  should  be  brought  to  Netherland  in  chartered 
ships,  and  sold  there  by  public  auction.  These  changes  in 
the  relation  of  the  State  to  external  commerce  were  the 
most  important  amendments  on  the  former  policy  of  the 
Company. 

If  the  report  of  the  commission  of  1803  deserves  to  be 
described  by  a  Dutch  author, ^  as  "the  most  important 
official  document  on  our  colonial  policy  that,  taking  the 
times  and  circumstances  into  account,  has  ever  appeared," 
this  is  not  alone  because  of  the  significance  of  its  contents 
so  far  as  I  have  already  outlined  it.  In  many  points,  as 
I  have  shown,  the  State  was  to  assume  the  same  position 
that  the  Company  had  held  ;  this  is  true  especially  of  the 
important  question  of  the  relations  of  Dutch  and  natives. 
The  surrender  by  the  State  of  the  commercial  functions  of 
the  Company,  though  forced  by  the  conviction  that  the 

1  Trade  with  China  and  Japan  was  subject  to  special  restrictions ; 
I  have  not  attempted  to  cover  all  the  details  of  these  commercial 
regulations. 

*  M.  L.  van  Deventer,  in  Jonge,  Opk. ,  13  :  lix.     Cf .  Mijer,  xvii. 


IV     JAVA  AFTEE  THE  FALL  OF  THE  COMPANY     145 

government  could  not  conduct  with  profit  a  trade  in 
which  a  corporation  had  failed,  was  still  only  partial.  If 
we  measure  the  importance  of  the  charter,  not  by  what 
it  retained  of  the  old  system  but  by  the  changes  that 
it  made,  the  greatest  innovations  were  not  in  policy 
but  in  the  field  of  the  Dutch  government  and  adminis- 
tration. 

The  Asiatic  Council,  established  in  1798  to  rule  the 
Eastern  possessions,  succeeded  not  only  to  the  place  but 
the  powers  of  the  directors  of  the  East  India  Company, 
and  governed  practically  as  it  pleased.  Now,  for  the  first 
time,  a  basis  for  government  was  set  for  the  Council  to 
which  it  must  conform.  Councillors  could^  no  longer,  as 
the  directors  had  done,  send  out  what  instructions  they 
pleased  to  the  Governor  General  ;  they  were  to  act 
strictly  within  the  lines  laid  down  for  them  and  were  re- 
sponsible to  the  State  for  any  transgression. i  The  State 
not  only  assumed  in  this  point  an  authority  which  was 
new  ;  it  proposed  that  its  authority  should  be  maintained 
in  the  East  as  that  of  the  Company's  directors  had  never 
been.  It  fixed  the  administrative  regulation  on  the  lines 
which  have  always  since  been  followed.  It  made  in  law 
the  Governor  General  independent  of  his  Council  as  he  had 
long  been  in  fact,  and  regulated  anew  the  positions  and 

iGrashuis,  Ind.  Gids,  2:1264;  Consideratien,  1803,  Bijl.  B.,  "In- 
structie  voor  den  Raad,"  Art.  1,  14,  Mijer,  p.  262  ff.  Tendencies  in  this 
direction  are  shown  by  the  Dutch  constitution  of  1801.  De  Louter, 
Handl.,  67.  I  must  say  here  tliat  I  shall  not  attempt  to  trace  through 
the  early  part  of  the  nineteenth  century  the  changes  in  the  organ  of  the 
home  government  (the  Council  or  single  minister)  intrusted  with  the 
general  direction  of  colonial  affairs.  Changes  are  not  infrequent,  but  I 
have  not  been  able  to  find  any  significance  in  them.  Up  to  the  time  of 
the  culture  system  the  home  government  exercised  a  comparatively  insig- 
nificant influence  on  the  course  of  colonial  affairs. 


146  THE   DUTCH   IN  JAVA  chap. 

powers  of  his  subordinates.  Provision  was  made  for  the 
improvement  of  fiscal  administration  and  control.  The 
civil  service  was  closed  to  all  who  had  not  passed  an  ex- 
amination in  the  Netherlands  and  served  for  three  years 
as  clerk  in  India  ;  it  was  to  be  divided  into  four  classes, 
and  service  of  three  years  in  one  class  w^as  a  prerequisite 
to  promotion  to  the  next.  Finally,  the  first  condition  of 
any  honest  and  efficient  administration  was  fulfilled  in 
promising  that  the  State  would  pay  such  salaries  to  its 
officials  that  they  could  live  according  to  their  rank  with- 
out dependence  on  outside  gains.  In  the  later  colonial 
constitutions  (^Regeerings  Reglementen)  amendments  were 
made  in  the  details  of  the  Indian  organization,  and  there 
were  great  changes  in  the  spirit  of  the  administration  at 
different  periods,  but  the  framework  of  the  government 
has  remained  substantially  as  it  was  fixed  by  the  charter 
of  1803.1 

The  importance  of  the  charter  of  180-3  comes  from  the 
fact  that  it  outlines  with  substantial  correctness  the 
Dutch  policy  and  the  ideals  of  the  Dutch  government  in 
the  following  period,  while  its  accompanying  report  gives 
an  insight  into  the  reasons  that  determined  the  decisions. 
Considered  as  positive  law,  the  charter  had  but  a  short  and 
unimportant  life.  It  was  adopted  by  the  executive  govern- 
ment of  the  Republic  in  1804.  Muntinghe,  who  was  an 
ardent  advocate  of  the  tax  system,  wrote  some  years  later  ^ 
that  public  opinion  was  very  much  divided  on  the  ques- 
tion of  the  preservation  of  the  "  feudal  system,"  and  that 
the  opinion  of  the  government  differed  so  far  from  that 

1  On  this  point  and  for  further  details  see  especially  Grashuis,  "  Het 
Charter  van  Nederburgh,"  Ind.  Gids,  1891,  2. 

2  Minute,  1813,  Raffles,  Sub.,  283. 


IV     JAVA  AFTER  THE  FALL  OF  THE  COMPANY     147 

of  the  commission  "that  in  the  resolution  passed  on 
their  report,  the  articles  of  coffee  and  pepper  were  left, 
with  every  other  kind  of  produce,  to  a  free  trade  and 
cultivation."  Whether  these  changes  were  made  or  not 
at  the  time  of  the  adoption  of  the  charter,^  they  were 
embodied  in  the  colonial  constitution  of  1806,  adopted 
under  the  rule  of  Grand  Pensionary  Schimmelpenninck. 
This  constitution  showed  a  more  liberal  tendency  also  in 
the  emphasis  it  laid  on  the  need  of  reforming  the  abuses 
of  forced  services.^  The  conditions  of  the  time,  however, 
were  such  that  the  government  of  the  Netherlands  had  no 
chance  to  put  the  charter  into  practical  effect  in  Java, 
where  the  remnants  of  the  Company's  administration  were 
struggling  to  maintain  themselves  as  best  they  could. 
Commissioners  were  sent  out  to  Java  to  introduce  the 
new  government,  but  they  were  delayed  so  long  before 
they  reached  the  island  that  they  were  recalled  by  Louis 
Bonaparte,  who  assumed  the  government  of  Holland  in 
June,  1806.  King  Louis  dissolved  the  Council  established 
to  govern  the  Asiatic  possessions,  substituting  for  it  a 
minister  of  his  own,  and  sent  out  a  Governor  General  in 
the  beginning  of  1807  to  represent  his  authority  in  the 
East.  He  instructed  the  new  Governor  General,  Daen- 
dels,  to  investigate  the  question  of  the  contingent  system, 

1  De  Louter,  68,  speaks  of  "some  changes"  in  the  charter  of  1803, 
but  refers  to  the  abolition  of  the  coffee  and  pepper  monopoly  as  though  it 
first  occurred  in  1806.  Mijer,  p.  xvii,  quotes  Muntinghe  without  giving 
help  from  other  sources.  D.  W.  Schiff,  "De  koloniale  politiek  onder 
den  Raadpensionaris  Rutger  van  Schimmelpenninck,"  Bijd.  TLV.,  1864, 
2:8:377  ff.,  gives  a  full  summary  of  the  legislative  history  of  the 
charter,  vvithout  referring  to  any  changes  made  in  it  at  the  time  of  its 
adoption  ;  the  text  that  he  gives  on  page  286  does  not  show  the  change  in 
question,  and  I  think  that  the  change  was  not  made  until  1806. 

2  Schiff,  KP.,  Bijd.  TLV.,  1864,  2:8:  .385-386. 


148  THE   DUTCH   IN  JAVA  chap. 

and  to  report  on  it  in  connection  with  the  recommenda- 
tions of  the  commission  of  1803  ;  meanwhile  he  was  to 
maintain  the  status  quo.^ 

With  the  arrival  of  Daendels  in  Java  the  centre  of 
interest  in  Dutch  colonial  policy  shifts  from  the  Nether- 
lands to  the  East.  Only  during  the  few  years  after  the 
fall  of  the  Company  was  the  colonial  question  very  much 
discussed  in  the  Netherlands,  and  was  action  taken  there 
that  was  of  moment  to  Java.  For  a  generation  following, 
the  governments  of  the  island,  Dutch  or  foreign,  were  left 
to  follow  instructions  or  to  disregard  them,  with  little 
influence  from  home.  The  report  of  1803  ^  had  recognized 
that  it  was  neither  desirable  nor  possible  to  put  the  Gov- 
ernor General  under  close  restrictions.  While  he  was  to 
be  held  strictly  subject  and  responsible  to  the  Council  in 
the  Netherlands,  he  was  given  all  power  necessary  to  carry 
on  government  under  the  difficulties  of  distance  and  his 
peculiar  environment.  The  character  of  the  times  forced 
even  greater  latitude  in  the  powers  of  the  colonial  govern- 
ment than  was  designed. 

Daendels  had  gained  his  appointment,  not  from  any 
experience  in  colonial  affairs,  but  as  the  reward  for  mili- 
tary and  political  service  under  the  French  in  the  Nether- 
lands. Not  bound  by  any  traditions  of  the  Company's 
system,  he  showed  himself  equally  free  from  any  deference 
to  the  views  of  the  liberal  party  ;  he  was  a  man  of  energy, 
who  saw  many  things  going  wrong,  and  set  about  in  a 
rough-and-ready  fashion  to  right  them.  The  difficulties 
of  communication  were  such  in  this  period  of  the  Napole- 
onic wars  that  he  did  not  receive  a  despatch  from  home 

1  Daendels,  Staat,  Bijl.,  1 :  Org.  Stukken,  Prep.  Mis.,  No.  1.,  Art.  27-28. 

2  Mijer,  160. 


IV     JAVA  AFTER  THE  FALL  OF  THE  COMPANY     149 

for  nearly  two  years  after  his  arrival  in  Java,^  and  shortly 
before  his  resignation  he  wrote  to  the  Emperor  Napoleon 
complaining  of  "  I'abandon  criminel,  dans  lequel  le  minis- 
tere  de  Hollande  a  eu  la  perfidie  de  laisser  cette  Colonic 
depuis  mon  arrivee."  ^ 

It  is  not  surprising,  under  the  circumstances,  that  he 
paid  little  regard  to  instructions  ;  he  followed  his  own 
ideas  ruthlessly,  as  will  appear  immediately.  After  a 
short  interval  followed  the  five  years  of  British  occupa- 
tion, even  more  free,  of  course,  from  any  guidance  on  tlie 
part  of  the  Dutch  government.  Another  colonial  consti- 
tution was  framed  in  the  Netherlands  before  the  restora- 
tion of  the  Dutch,  but  it  had  no  practical  influence.  The 
independence  of  the  island  can  be  measured  by  the  fact 
that  the  commissioners,  who  were  sent  out  to  govern  it 
after  the  evacuation  of  the  British,  framed  a  constitution 
for  the  government  of  India  in  1818,  which  never  re- 
ceived the  royal  sanction,  but  which  all  the  Indian  officials 
swore  to  observe,  and  which  was  regarded  as  fundamental 
until  1827.  It  was  replaced  in  1827  again  by  a  constitu- 
tion framed  by  a  royal  commissioner  in  Java  and  lacking 
the  royal  sanction  ;  the  new  constitution  was  designed  to 
check  the  independence  of  the  colonial  government,  which 
had  shown  a  flagrant  disregard  of  restraints  imposed  by 
the    previous  fundamental  law  and   by  orders  from    the 

1  He  arrived  in  Java  Jan.  1,  1808  ;  on  Nov.  30,  1809,  he  acknowledged 
the  receipt  of  the  first  despatches,  which  had  come  a  few  daj\s  before. 
Jonge,  Opk.,  13:  433.  In  April,  1810,  he  acknowledged  despatches  sent 
June,  1809.  76.,  p.  458.  In  January,  1802,  the  Governor  General  had  not 
received  a  letter  sent  in  March,  1800,  referred  to  in  a  letter  August,  1800, 
which  had  arrived.  lb.,  p.  32.  This  was  in  a  period  in  which  good  ships, 
especially  American  ships,  made  the  trip  from  North  America  or  Europe 
to  Java  in  four  months.     lb,,  p.  98. 

2  December,  1810,  Jonge,  Opk.,  13  :  620. 


150  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

Minister  of  the  Colonies.  At  this  time  the  home  govern- 
ment was  tending  to  draw  tighter  the  bond  which  held 
the  colonies,  because  of  its  fiscal  needs,  and  because  of 
them  it  established  the  culture  system  in  1830.  It  will 
be  necessary,  on  reaching  that  date  in  the  narrative,  to 
return  to  the  Netherlands  to  explain  the  development  of 
the  Dutch  colonial  policy  ;  in  the  intervening  period  the 
main  influences  on  the  development  of  policy  and  admin- 
istration are  to  be  found  in  the  island  of  Java  itself. 

An  idea  o^  the  conditions  that  existed  in  Java  when 
Daendels  arrived  can  be  given  by  quoting  from  one  of 
his  reports^  the  results  of  an  investigation  made  on 
the  northeast  coast,  the  most  important  section  of  the 
island  under  Dutch  rule.  During  the  eight  years'  rule  of 
Governor  Engelhardt  the  expenses  of  the  government 
had  increased,  and  public  interests  and  revenues  had  been 
neglected  ;  dishonesty  was  the  rule  in  the  administration 
of  the  public  warehouses,  and  there  had  been  flagrant 
fraud  in  the  leasing  of  public  lands.  Restrictions  on 
trade  and  on  the  import  of  opium  had  been  publicly  dis- 
regarded. The  Governor  himself,  or  others  with  his 
connivance,  had  secured  monopolies  which  they  exploited. 
Natives  had  received  no  pay  for  the  products  that  they 
delivered  or  had  been  cheated  on  the  weight.  They  had 
suffered  from  a  great  abuse  of  the  forced  services  to 
which  they  were  subject,  and  were  held  in  credit  bondage 
for  debts  that  were  insignificant  or  had  been  increased  by 
fraud.  Neither  the  Governor  nor  any  of  the  subordinate 
officials  had  thought  it  necessary  to  repress  these  abuses 

1  12  Nov.,  1808,  Opk.,  13  :  318.  There  is  no  reason  to  doubt  the  sub- 
stantial correctness  of  this  description  ;  it  merely  adds  details  to  the 
general  idea  given  by  "\'an  Hogendorp. 


IV      JAVA  AFTER  THE  FALL  OF  THE  COMPANY     151 

SO  long  as  they  did  not  exceed  a  traditional  limit.  The 
peculiar  political  position  of  the  government  of  the  north- 
east coast,  which  was  so  independent  of  the  Governor 
General  during  the  eighteenth  century  that  he  could  exer- 
cise little  supervision  there,  would  make  it  possible  for 
abuses  such  as  Daendels  described  to  be  confined  to  that 
part  of  the  island.  Other  evidence,  however,  shows  that 
they  were  pretty  general  throughout  Java.^ 

The  first  evil  that  Daendels  had  to  meet,  the  one  that 
he  attacked  with  the  greatest  intelligence  and  force,  was 
the  inefficiency  and  corruption  of  the  Dutch  administra- 
tion. Apart  from  the  personal  character  of  the  officials, 
he  found  that  the  scheme  of  organization  was  bad. 
Government  and  administration  were  confused,  and  the 
highest  officials  were  so  burdened  with  the  care  of  petty 
details  that  they  had  not  the  power,  if  they  had  the  will, 
to  oversee  and  check  the  actions  of  their  subordinates. 
The  councillors  were  men  taken  from  the  posts  of  govern- 
ment in  the  outlying  factories;  their  successors  were 
afraid  to  complain  of  the  dishonest  practices  which  they 
left  behind  them,  and  they  in  turn  tolerated  the  continu- 
ance of  the  abuses.  The  Director  General  decided  impor- 
tant  questions  without  the  knowledge  of  the  Governor 

1  See  "Europeesche  zeden  op  Java  in  Daendels'  tijd,"  Ind.  Gids,  1896, 
1 :  285-286,  based  on  the  Indian  statute  book  of  the  period.  We  find  a  resi- 
dent who  stole  the  crown  jewels  of  a  native  prince,  a  sheriff  who  levied 
blackmail  on  innocent  prisoners,  a  captain  in  the  army  who  struck  his 
under-oflBcers  and  men  in  the  face  during  drill,  used  them  for  domestic 
servants,  and  sold  their  rations  for  his  own  profit,  other  officers  who  abused 
the  natives  and  took  their  property  without  paying  for  it. 

In  Braem's  report  of  1808,  "  Bijdrage  tot  de  geschiedenis  en  de  kennis 
van  Nederlandsch  Indie  in  het  jaar  1807,"  TNI.,  1803,  1 :  2:  23,  we  find 
evidence  of  a  general  lack  of  officials  competent  to  fill  either  high  or  low 
positions. 


152  THE    DUTCH   IN  JAVA  chap. 

General  and  Council.^  The  Governor  of  the  northeast 
coast  acted  like  a  separate  and  independent  sovereign, 
and  his  position  threatened  to  nullify  any  attempt  at  a 
general  reform.^ 

Daendels  recalled  the  Governor  of  the  northeast  coast, 
without  appointing  a  successor,  and  centralized  and 
simplified  the  government  at  Batavia.  He  greatly  ex- 
tended the  real  power  of  the  Governor  General  by  reliev- 
ing him  of  minor  duties.  To  insure  stricter  accounting 
in  the  civil  and  military  services,  he  established  a  general 
board  of  audit  and  introduced  a  simpler  method  of  book- 
keeping.^ New  offices  were  established  for  the  conduct 
of  special  business,  as  that  concerning  the  coffee  planta- 
tions and  forests.  In  place  of  the  previous  officials,  with 
their  various  titles  and  widely  different  spheres  of  au- 
thority, the  provincial  government  was  intrusted  to  nine 
"prefects,"  who  were  directly  subject  to  the  Governor 
General  and  represented  his  authority  in  the  different 
parts  of  the  island.  The  prefect  could  be  termed,  as  was 
the  intendant  of  the  old  regime  in  France,  the  work- 
horse of  the  provincial  administration ;  all  kinds  of 
power,  political,  administrative,  financial,  military,  and 
judicial,  were  united  in  his  hands,  and  were  exercised 
by  him  under  the  orders  of  the  Governor  General.* 

Daendels  not  only  reformed  the  scheme  of  administra- 
tion, but  also  the  mode  of  paying  and  promoting  offi- 
cials, so  that  a  career  in  the  colonial  service  could  be 
pursued  with  honesty  and  still  with  success.     The  first 

1  Daendels,  Staat,  4  ff. 

2  Daendels  to  Min.,  20  Mar.,  1808,  Jonge,  Opk.,  13  :  313. 

8  Further  details  will  be  found  in  Opk.,  13  :  306  ff,  349  fi. ;  Staat,  74-80. 
*  Details  in  Kleyn,  "  Het  gewestelijk  bestuur,"  32  ff. 


IV     JAVA  AFTER  THE  FALL  OF  THE  COMPANY    153 

steps  toward  the  realization  of  the  ideal  of  Nederburgh 
and  his  fellow-commissioners  of  1803,  that  young  men 
of  high  principles  might  be  attracted  to  the  colonial  ad- 
ministration, were  taken  when  Daendels  abolished  the 
tax  which  the  Company  had  used  to  mulct  officials  of 
their  extra  gains  at  the  same  time  that  he  prohibited 
these  gains  and  established  fixed  and  adequate  salaries.^ 

In  no  branch  of  its  government  did  the  Company  need 
reform  more  than  in  its  judicial  organization.  The  con- 
ditions as  far  as  regarded  the  Dutch  themselves  were 
tolerable.  A  code  of  laws  based  on  those  at  home  had 
been  formed  in  the  seventeenth  century,  which  is  said  to 
have  been  satisfactory  in  itself,  but  which  suffered  in  its 
application  by  the  dependence  of  the  judicial  on  the  exec- 
utive branch  of  the  government,  and  by  the  poor  quality 
of  the  men  who  sat  as  judges. ^  It  was  the  natives  who 
suffered  most  in  this  as  in  other  ways  from  the  utter 
neglect  of  the  Company  where  its  direct  pecuniary  inter- 
ests were  not  concerned.     The  Company  maintained  but 

1  The  salaries  of  the  prefects  ranged  from  ten  to  twenty  thousand  dol- 
lars (Dutch)  a  year,  Opk.,  13:322.  Daendels  describes,  ih.,  p.  393, 
his  reform  in  the  salaries  of  the  warehouse  officials,  wlio  had  before  de- 
pended on  various  fees  and  gains  that  opened  the  way  to  abuses. 

2  Polanen,  who  was  himself  Vice-President  of  the  Council  of  Justice, 
wrote  in  1806  that  the  authorities  at  home  during  the  last  twenty-five 
years  had  shown  the  most  complete  indifference  as  to  whether  justice  in 
Java  was  administered  well,  badly,  or  not  at  all.  Opk.,  13  :  270.  That 
the  judicial  authority  should  be  to  a  certain  extent  dependent  was  re- 
garded as  necessary  (cf.  Wiese,  ib.,  13:  63),  and  Daendels  aimed  to  pre- 
vent the  courts  from  being  "disobedient "  to  the  government.  Daendels  to 
Min.,  October,  1809,  Jonge,  Opk.,  13 :  428  ;  M.  L.  van  Deventer  in  Opk., 
13:  Ixxxix.  Wiese  wrote  (1802,  Opk.,  13:  53)  that  it  was  impossible  to 
keep  good  men  in  the  judicial  position,  because  of  the  inadequate  salaries, 
and  Daendels  found  the  members  of  the  high  court  at  Batavia  morally 
and  intellectually  unfit  for  their  duties  (i6.,  13  :  354). 


154  THE   DUTCH   IN  JAVA  chap. 

two  courts  for  cases  in  which  natives  were  concerned. 
The  court  at  Samarang  had  jurisdiction  of  the  whole 
eastern  half  of  the  island,  so  far  as  it  was  subject  to  the 
Company,  and  criminals  and  witnesses  were  brought 
hundreds  of  miles  to  wait  in  prison  for  the  annual  session. 
This  court  was  composed  of  native  regents,  who  judged 
according  to  the  native  law  but  were  in  all  important 
cases  subject  to  the  will  of  the  Dutch  Governor.  ^  The 
court  of  schepens  at  Batavia  seems  to  have  met  more  fre- 
quently, and  did  not  have  such  an  extensive  jurisdiction, 
but  the  parties  and  witnesses  to  a  suit  were  kept  waiting 
for  weeks  and  sometimes  until  they  had  fallen  victims 
to  the  unwholesome  climate. ^  As  might  be  expected 
the  natives  showed  little  inclination  to  seek  Dutch 
justice ;  on  the  contrary  they  tried  to  conceal  crimes 
serious  enough  to  be  brought  before  the  Dutch  courts, 
and  never  appeared  as  witnesses  unless  brought  in  chains.^ 
Daendels  took  the  only  step  adapted  to  remedy  this  state 
of  affairs,  by  increasing  the  number  of  courts,  making 
each  prefect  the  president  of  a  native  tribunal  in  which 
all  civil  and  criminal  cases,  unless  they  were  of  unusual 
moment,  were  tried.* 

Under  the  head  of  Daendels's  influence  on  the  adminis- 
tration in  Java  there  remains  to  be  considered  only  one 
topic,  that  of  the   native  organization.      The  Governor 

iDeReus,  NOC,  172. 

2  Mijer,  Verz.,  185  ;  Daendels,  Staat,  15. 

'  Daendels  ascribed  to  this  condition  a  large  part  of  the  native  crimes 
in  the  country  around  Batavia.  He  made  special  arrangements  in  that 
district.     Opk.,  13  :  308  ff. 

*Opk.,  13  :  330.  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  1:27.  Daendels  also  in- 
creased the  number  of  high  courts  and  ordered  that  native  courts  should 
meet  twice  a  week  in  each  regency. 


IV      JAVA  AFTER  THE  FALL  OF  THE  COMPANY     15C 

General  had  been  instructed,  in  the  spirit  of  the  charter 
and  the  later  colonial  constitution,  to  improve  the  lot  of 
the  common  people.  There  was  only  one  way  in  which 
he  could  do  this  effectually,  by  reforming  the  native 
governments,  which  made  up  nine-tenths  of  all  the  gov- 
ernment that  the  people  had.  Daendels  knew  the  evils 
that  existed.  He  studied  at  first  hand  the  conditions 
under  which  the  people  lived,  in  a  hasty  trip  through  the 
island.  He  got  all  the  information  that  he  could  from 
the  European  governors,  and  from  the  native  rulers  as 
well,  arranging  a  congress  in  which  he  met  thirty-eight 
regents  for  a  conference  on  the  problems  before  him.^ 
He  had,  too,  the  right  idea,  of  attempting  no  radical 
departure  from  the  framework  of  the  native  organization 
as  it  existed,  but  of  adapting  his  reforms  to  it.  Even 
his  energy  could  accomplish  little,  however,  in  the  face  of 
a  great  social  organization,  that  had  led  its  independent 
life  for  centuries,  that  had  been  changed  only  in  its  upper 
strata  by  the  contact  with  the  Dutch,  and  was  destined 
to  defy  their  attempts  to  mould  it  for  many  years  to 
come. 

At  the  points  of  direct  contact  between  Dutch  and  na- 
tives, changes  were  possible  and  were  effected.  Regents 
were  henceforth  to  hold  the  position,  not  of  protected 
rulers,  but  of  government  officials,  bearing  the  honorable 
title  of  "  the  King's  Servants  "  ;  they  were  to  stand  no 
longer  in  the  relations  of  contract  with  the  government  but 
subject  to  it. 2  At  the  courts  of  Soerakarta  and  Djokjo- 
karta,  the  most  independent  of  the  native  states  in  Java, 
the  Dutch  ministers  were  to  appear  with  the  golden  para- 
sol, the  attribute  of  high  royalty,  and  were  to  remain  cov- 
1  Staat,  40.  2  Opk.,  13  :  329. 


156  THE  DUTCH   IN  JAVA  chap. 

ered  in  the  presence  of  the  princes. ^  Changes  of  this  for- 
mal character  were  easily  effected,  but  were  of  little  more 
than  nominal  importance.  Changes  reaching  much  further 
were  designed.  The  regents'  incomes  were  carefully  de- 
fined to  prevent  the  abuse  of  their  right  to  demand  taxes 
and  services  of  the  people,  and  they  were  forbidden  to 
give  or  receive  presents  on  the  occasion  of  official  appoint- 
ments. Subordinate  native  officials,  down  even  to  the 
rank  of  village  head-man,  were  to  be  appointed  by  the 
Dutch. 2  The  duties  and  power  of  each  official  were  scru- 
pulously described.^  The  only  thing  lacking  is  the  proof 
that  these  wholesome  regulations  were  actually  carried 
out.  In  the  absence  of  this  proof,  and  with  certain  indi- 
cations that  the  old  abuses  continued  throughout  the  fol- 
lowing period,  there  seems  little  reason  to  discuss  further 
the  plans  of  Daendels  for  the  reform  of  the  native  organi- 
zation.*   They  were  only  a  platform  of  principles.* 

Further  light  is  thrown  on  the  weakness  of  Daendels's 

1  See  M.  L.  van  Deventer  in  Opk.,  13  :  cxi,  for  a  criticism  of  the  wisdom 
of  this  regulation  and  an  examination  of  Daendels's  claim  to  accuracy  in 
his  description  of  humiliations  imposed  on  former  residents. 

2  Opk.,  13 :  328.     S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  1  :  32  ff. 

3  See  Kleyn,  44  ff. 

*  In  Daendels's  reports,  it  is  true,  we  are  always  given  the  impression 
that  the  reforms  he  proposed  were  being  carried  to  a  successful  conclu- 
sion, and  that  the  Javanese  had  benefited  greatly  from  them.  From  other 
sources  we  get  the  contrary  impression,  and  these  are  the  only  soiirces 
that  corroborate  each  other.  An  idea  of  Daendels's  honesty  of  statement 
can  be  got  from  the  fact  that  he  (Staat,  115)  has  the  audacity  to  hold  up 
as  a  source  of  great  benefit  to  Java  the  post-road,  which  the  people  were 
forbidden  to  use,  and  which  cost  them  in  its  construction  an  amount 
of  suffering  almost  incredible.  Kleyn  says  that  by  the  measure  making 
regents  government  officials  "an  end  was  put  to  the  independence  of  the 
regents  in  Java,"  but  cites  no  proof.  Kleyn  gives  a  useful  summary  of 
the  laws  that  were  passed,  but  does  not  follow  them  up  and  show  to  what 
extent  they  were  enforced. 


IV     JAVA  AFTER  THE  FALL  OF  THE  COMPANY     167 

attempt  to  reform  the  native  organization  by  a  considera- 
tion of  the  fiscal  policy  which  he  adopted.  In  a  document 
dated  some  six  montlis  after  his  arrival  in  Java,^  he  seems 
to  have  proposed  to  try  the  experiment  of  introducing  a 
government  tax  of  one-fifth  of  the  rice  crop  in  the  province 
of  Cheribon,  which  had  been  recently  annexed.  The  ex- 
periment was  never  carried  into  effect.  Daendels  showed, 
from  the  very  beginning  of  his  government,  a  marked  lean- 
ing toward  the  old  contingent  system,  and  before  the  end 
of  his  first  year  of  rule^  he  had  reached  the  conclusion 
that  this  system  was  inevitable  under  the  conditions.  He 
cited  as  reasons  for  the  impossibility  of  introducing  a  tax 
system  the  low  state  of  the  common  people,  the  small 
amount  of  their  production  and  consumption,  the  petty 
sums  of  money  which  they  handled,  —  a  number  of  reasons 
which  rather  shadow  forth  than  express  the  truth,  that  no 
system  could  be  adopted  which  was  not  put  absolutely  into 
the  hands  of  the  native  governments  for  administration. 

It  is  impossible  to  say  whether  he  realized  that  this 
question  of  administration  was  the  vital  one  in  determining 
the  Dutch  fiscal  policy,  and  kept  the  fact  to  himself  because 
he  saw  the  inconsistency  of  advocating  the  reform  of  the 
native  government  at  the  same  time  that  he  declared  his 
dependence  on  it.  Whatever  the  secret  opinions  of  Daen- 
dels may  have  been,  there  is  no  question  about  his  acts. 
With  the  same  vigor  and  resolution  that  he  showed  in  re- 
forming the  abuses  of  the  Dutch  administration,  he  main- 

1  Instruktie  enz.,  June  19,  1808,  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  1  :  38-42,  The 
document  is  a  set  of  instructions  to  native  commissioners  who  were  to 
assess  and  collect  the  tax.  In  the  regulations  for  the  government  of  the 
northeast  coast,  September,  1808,  a  tax  was  imposed  on  the  land  of  natives 
not  subject  to  forced  cultures  ;  this  was  given  up  May,  1809.     LS.,  1  :  34. 

2  Governor  General  to  Minister,  12  Nov.,  1808,  Opk.,  13  :  326. 


168  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

tained  and  extended  the  Company's  fiscal  system,  and 
sacrificed  the  natives  and  tlie  native  governments  to  tlie 
demands  imposed  upon  tliem.  He  made  some  reforms  in 
tlie  cultures;  he  gave  up,  for  instance,  the  requirement  of 
indigo  and  cotton  yarn,  which  bore  heavily  on  the  people 
and  gave  little  return  to  the  Dutch.  He  exceeded  his  in- 
structions, however,  in  requiring  the  cultivation  of  a  new 
product,  cotton,  in  place  of  these,^  and  when  that  culture 
proved  a  failure,  he  concentrated  his  attention  on  the  ex- 
tension of  the  coffee  culture.  He  believed  that  the  poor 
condition  in  which  he  found  the  coffee  culture  was  due  to 
the  neglect  of  the  government,^  but  he  did  little  to  remedy 
the  evils  existing,  and  rather  magnified  them  by  spreading 
them  over  a  wider  area.  He  forced  the  Javanese  to  plant 
coffee  in  their  gardens,  and  even  on  the  graves  of  their  an- 
cestors, and  caused  the  flight  of  thousands  of  natives  and 
the  depopulation  of  some  districts  by  the  severity  of  his 
measures.^  In  theory  the  planters  were  to  receive  pay  for 
the  coffee  they  delivered,  but  the  old  abuses  were  main- 
tained in  measuring  the  weight  of  the  product,  except  that 
the  government  was  now  to  profit  by  them  instead  of  the 
officials,  and  there  is  nothing  to  show  that  the  natives  were 
luckier  in  getting  their  pay  than  formerly.*  The  result, 
at  any  rate,  was  the  same,  —  neglect  of  the  plantations  and 
their  consequent  decline. 

1  S.  van  Deventer,  LS,,  1 :  33. 

2  0pk.,  13:319ff. 

8  Raffles,  Sub.,  66  ;  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  2  :  192,  quoting  Engelhardt. 

*  Regulations  like  tliose  of  Daendels  had  been  passed  in  tlie  time  of  the 
Company  without  remedying  the  evil,  and  improvement  must  at  best  have 
been  slow.  Former  abuses  persisted  in  the  pepper  and  rice  deliveries 
(M.  L.  van  Deventer,  in  Opk.,  13  :  Ixix),  and  though  Daendels  gave  up  the 
government  sugar  business  he  created  a  rice  monopoly  that  was  far  more 
oppressive,     lb.,  13  :  Ixxxii,  332. 


IV     JAVA  AFTER  THE  FALL  OF  THE  COMPANY     159 

Daendels  took  some  salutary  measures  to  restrict  the 
demands  that  officials  could  make  on  the  services  of  the 
natives  for  their  personal  use.  Dutch  officials  had  been 
accustomed  by  exercise  of  their  authority  to  maintain 
great  troops  of  domestic  servants,  and  to  use  the  natives 
as  beasts  of  burden  in  transporting  merchandise,  giving 
little  or  no  pay  in  return.  Daendels  forbade  these  prac- 
tices, and  defined  the  services  that  could  legitimately  be 
required  of  the  natives:  work  in  maintaining  roads  and 
canals,  in  transporting  goods  on  government  service,  and 
in  loading  and  discharging  ships.  He  attempted  also  to 
interfere  in  the  native  organization  to  free  the  people 
from  the  necessity  of  doing  carrying  service  for  their 
rulers.  To  conclude,  however,  from  these  regulations, 
that  Daendels  earnestly  meant  to  improve  the  condition 
of  the  common  people  would  be  wide  of  the  mark  ;  he 
freed  the  natives  from  these  demands  only  to  lay  still 
heavier  ones  upon  them  in  the  name  of  the  government. 
He  upholds,  in  one  place,i  "  the  general  principle,  that  an 
increase  in  taxes,  so  long  as  it  does  not  exceed  the  ability 
of  the  natives,  serves  to  stimulate  all  branches  of  industry 
and  to  increase  not  only  the  public  revenues,  but  the  wel- 
fare of  individuals."  Whatever  truth  there  may  be  in 
this,  viewed  as  an  abstraction,  applied  as  it  had  to  be 
through  the  native  officials,  the  principle  could  be  saved 
from  disastrous  results  only  by  the  exercise  of  modera- 
tion, patience,  and  sympathy  that  were  entirely  foreign  to 
Daendels's  character.  He  laid  upon  the  regents  a  whole 
series  of  onerous  burdens,  which  they  in  turn  imposed  on 
their  subjects. ^     His  system  has  been  described  by  one  of 

1  Daendels  to  Min.,  August,  1809,  Opk,,  13  :  390. 

2  See  the  summary  by  Van  Deventer  in  Opk.,  13  :  Ixvii. 


160  THE   DUTCH   IN  JAVA  chaf. 

his  subordinates  ^  as  "  the  most  vigorous  attempt  ever 
made,  at  least  in  Dutch  India,  to  get  from  a  people  by 
force  and  by  forced  labor  all  that  can  be  demanded  not 
alone  for  commerce  but  for  public  works,  for  a  strong 
defence,  for  ample  payment  of  officials,  and  for  the  un- 
hampered establishment  of  all  departments  and  branches 
of  administration."  The  most  notorious  case  in  which  he 
abused  the  power  to  demand  services  was  the  building  of 
the  great  military  road,  which  extended  nearly  the  whole 
length  of  the  island,  and  which  he  had  made  in  two  years 
by  merciless  compulsion  of  the  natives.^  Daendels's  suc- 
cessor as  Governor  General  wrote  to  the  colonial  minister 
soon  after  his  arrival,  in  regard  to  the  condition  of  the 
natives  under  Daendels,  that  they  were  so  burdened  with 
forced  services  that  they  were  certainly  more  wretched 
than  they  had  ever  been.^ 

Some  excuse  for  the  entire  disregard  that  Daendels 
showed  of  the  spirit  and  letter  of  the  instructions  defin- 
ing the  attitude  he  should  assume  toward  the  natives  can 
be  found  in  the  peculiar  political  and  commercial  circum- 
stances of  the  period  of  his  rule.  Before  his  arrival  the 
Dutch  in  Java  had  been  forced  to  allow  free  trade  to  ships 
of  foreign  nations ;  it  was  the  period  of  the  Napoleonic 
wars,  and  there  was  no  way  to  market  the  products  which 

1  Muntinghe,  Hep.,  1817,  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  1  :  302. 

2  Daendels  gives  account  to  the  government  (Opk.,  13  :  315,  335)  of  the 
progress  of  the  road,  but  says  nothing  of  the  terrible  sufferings  it  caused. 
They  are  described  frequently  by  later  writers.  Money  characteristically 
describes  the  roads  made  "by  forced  labor  at  a  great  sacrifice  of  life," 
and  later  remarks  that  they  "bring  down  daily  blessings  on  Daendels's 
name."  Java,  1 :  161.  The  extent  to  which  the  fear  of  Daendels  still 
lives  in  the  native  mind  can  be  measured  by  an  anecdote  in  Leclerq, 
"Java,"  Eev.  Deux  Mondes,  November,  1897,  144  :  175. 

8  Governor  General  Janssens  to  Min.,  21  June,  1811,  Opk.,  13 :  541, 


IV  JAVA   AFTER  THE  FALL   OF  THE   COMPANY  181 

formed  the  government  revenue,  but  by  accepting  the 
services  of  neutral  carriers.  The  fiscal  results  of  this 
period  between  the  fall  of  the  Company  and  the  arrival  of 
Daendels  were  fairly  good,  and  are  taken  by  some  to  show 
that  the  Company  owed  its  decline  rather  to  the  losses  in 
its  commerce  than  to  its  territorial  rule.^  About  the  time 
of  Daendels's  arrival,  however,  the  effect  of  the  American 
embargo  began  to  be  felt ;  a  great  stock  of  products 
accumulated  in  the  warehouses,  for  which  there  was  no 
market. 2  Daendels  was  in  straits,  therefore,  from  the 
beginning  of  his  administration,  while  he  had  to  regard 
an  attack  on  the  island  by  the  British  as  reasonably  cer- 
tain. He  had  recourse  to  all  kinds  of  expedients,  loans 
and  confiscations,  the  issue  of  depreciated  currency,  and 
the  sale  to  individuals  of  the  government's  rights  in  land.^ 
Under  the  circumstances  he  was  not  likely  to  be  very  scrupu- 
lous in  limiting  the  demands  that  he  made  upon  the  natives. 
He  shows  throughout  the  brief  period  of  his  rule  the 
methods  of  a  politician  rather  than  of  a  statesman,  making 
his  decisions   suit  the  needs  of   the  moment  with  little 

1  Speech  of  Van  Alphen,  1825-1826,  De  Waal,  NISG.,  1 :  231  ;  Veth, 
Java,  2  :  257.  Braem's  report  of  1808,  "Bijdrage  tot  de  geschiedenis  en 
de  kennis  van  Nederlandsch  Indie  in  het  jaar  1807,"  TNI.,  1863,  1 :  2  :  29, 
gives  a  pretty  satisfactory  fiscal  showing  except  for  the  circulation  of 
depreciated  paper  money. 

2  Daendels  to  Minister,  Opk.,  13:455,  468;  Jaussaud,  Memoire,  ib., 
p.  515.  Wiese  wrote  in  1802  that  it  would  have  been  impossible  to  main- 
tain the  government  during  the  past  war  without  the  specie  brought  by 
American  ships.     Ib.,  p.  91. 

3  Jaussaud,  "  Memoire  sur  la  commerce,"  1810,  Opk.,  13:  513  ff.  ;  Gov- 
ernor General  Janssens  to  Minister,  1811,  ib.,  539.  It  was  nothing  less 
than  impudence  for  Daendels  to  write  to  the  king  as  he  did  in  1810  that 
the  finances  were  in  such  good  condition  that  instead  of  his  drawing  on 
the  king  as  authorized,  he  could  let  the  king  draw  on  him  for  1,000,000 
gulden.     Ib.,  493. 


162  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

regard  for  the  future.  This  is  true  especially  of  his  fiscal 
policy ;  he  could  not  afford  to  wait  for  returns,  and  so 
reverted  to  the  old  means  of  getting  them.  Even  in  the 
most  permanent  and  valuable  of  his  contributions  to  the 
colony,  his  reorganization  of  the  Dutch  government  and 
administration,  he  set  in  his  own  career  an  example  of 
arbitrariness  and  contempt  for  law  which  was  wholly  at 
variance  with  the  system  that  he  desired  to  impose  upon 
his  subordinates.  He  used  his  official  j)Osition  to  force 
merchants  to  sell  to  the  government  at  any  price  he  chose ; 
other  buyers  were  frightened  away.^  On  one  occasion  he 
commanded  five  persons,  on  trial  before  the  High  Court, 
to  be  hanged  within  three  dajs,  and  had  the  sentence 
executed  in  spite  of  the  opposition  of  the  court.  At  an- 
other time  he  arrested  and  kept  in  close  confinement  seven 
men,  former  officials,  without  judicial  warrant  and  with- 
out apparent  reason. ^  He  refused  to  honor  a  contract 
made  by  a  government  agent  with  American  commercial 
houses  and  killed  the  American  trade. ^  "  The  ardent 
hope  of  seeing  the  end  of  an  administration  which  op- 
pressed every  one  made  the  Europeans  as  well  as  the 
natives  desire  to  see  the  colony  pass  into  the  hands  of 
the  enemy,"  wrote  Daendels's  successor,  Janssens.* 

1  Jaussaud,  "Memoire,"  Opk.,  13:  518. 

2  "Zeven  Bannelingen,"  TNI.,  1860,  22  :  2  :  146,  148.  An  official  who 
disobeyed  him  and  showed  disrespect  was  flogged  by  Daendels's  orders. 

3  M.  L.  van  De venter  in  Opk.,  13  :  Ixxxv  ff.  The  Americans  were  after- 
wards granted  compensation  by  the  government.  M.  L.  van  Deventer, 
Ned.  Gezag,  179. 

*  Quoted  in  Opk.,  1.3:  cxxix.  Compare  Governor  General  Janssens  to 
Minister,  June,  1811,  ib.,  541.  "  L'ile  de  Java  est  tr^s  malheureuse  .  .  . 
le  m^contentement,  pour  ne  pas  dire  le  d^sespoir,  6tait  k  son  comble  .  .  . 
La  terreur  ^tait  si  grande,  que  son  impression  durait  meme  aprfes  mon 
arriv^e  :  la  crainte  fermait  encore  la  bouche  aux  premiers  fonctionnaires." 


IV     JAVA  AFTER  THE  FALL  OF  THE  COMPANY    163 

The  estimate  placed  on  Daendels  and  on  his  work  by 
different  authors  has  varied  immensely.  By  some  he  has 
been  pictured  as  one  of  the  great  reformers. ^  The  ten- 
dency of  recent  times,  if  we  can  take  as  an  expression 
of  it  the  writings  of  Mr.  M.  L.  van  Deventer,  one  of 
the  most  distinguished  of  modern  Dutch  workers  in  colo- 
nial history,  is  in  the  reverse  direction. ^  Some  features  of 
Daendels's  activity,  especially  his  political  relations  with 
the  individual  native  princes,  lie  outside  the  range  of  this 
study.  So  far  as  concerns  his  other  work,  he  seems  to  me 
to  be  entitled  to  high  credit  for  having  "  cleaned  out  the 
Augean  stable  of  the  Company "  in  the  reorganization  of 
the  Dutch  administration. ^  In  his  attitude  toward  the 
great  question  of  the  government  of  the  natives  and  their 
fiscal  relations  with  the  Dutch,  he  shows  a  consciousness  of 
abuses  and  an  idea  of  how  they  could  be  remedied,  which 
might,  under  more  favorable  circumstances,  have  led  to 
real  reforms,  but  which  did  not  prevent  him  in  fact  from 
continuing  the  system  of  the  East  India  Company  and 
exaggerating  some  of  its  worst  features. 

1  Cf.  Kleyn,  Gewest,  Best.,  51  ff.  ;  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  1  :  54, 
"Daendels  cleared  the  way  for  Raffles."  Pierson,  KP.,  10,  says  that 
Daendels's  object  was  to  maintain  the  old  system  but  to  free  it  from 
abuses  ;  Ife  judges  Daendels  by  his  professions  rather  than  by  his  practice, 
and  his  judgment  is  too  favorable. 

2  Cf.  Opk.,  13:  lix,  xciv,  cxli. 

8  The  phrase  of  Meinsma,  NOT.,  2  : 1 :  63. 


CHAPTER  V 

PERIOD  OF  BRITISH  RULE 

rriOWARD  the  close  of  the  eighteenth  century  the  Eng- 
•'-  lish  had  intruded  more  and  more  in  the  commerce 
of  the  Dutch  islands  ;  their  smuggling  increased,  and 
they  obtained  concessions  to  trade  from  the  Dutch  gov- 
ernment. Dutch  officials  felt  that  the  English  would 
attempt  to  make  up  for  the  loss  of  the  American  pos- 
sessions by  extension  in  the  East,^  and  opportunities 
to  effect  this  extension  in  legal  form  were  offered  by 
the  political  changes  of  the  Napoleonic  period  in  Europe. 
When  William  V  fled  from  the  Netherlands  in  1795,  he 
commissioned  the  English  to  occupy  the  Dutch  colonies 
for  him,  and  most  of  the  Dutch  possessions  in  the  East 
came  under  the  British  flag  soon  afterward.  Batavia  was 
blockaded  by  an  English  squadron  in  1800,  and  Java  was 
saved  from  conquest  at  that  time  probably  only  by  the 
diversion  of  the  Egyptian  expedition. ^  Twice  in  the 
period  1803-1811  an  English  fleet  appeared  off  the  island 
and  made  hostile  demonstrations,  and  in  October,  1811, 
the  conquest  which  had  so  long  impended  actually  oc- 
curred. Java  was  in  no  condition  to  offer  serious  oppo- 
sition to  the  English  arms.     Daendels   had   made   some 

1  Secret  Resolution,  Governor  General  and  Council,  1785,  De  Jonge, 
Opk.,  12:68. 

2  M.  L.  van  Deventer  in  Opk.,  13  :  v.  Van  Deventer  shows  in  this  work 
and  in  the  introduction  to  his  Ned.  Gezag  that  the  conquest  of  Java  had 
been  contemplated  by  the  British  long  before  it  was  actually  carried  out, 

164 


CHAP.v  PERIOD   OF   BRITISH   RULE  165 

improvements  of  military  value  in  the  construction  of 
roads,  forts,  and  harbors,  but  he  had  roused  such  opposi- 
tion by  his  arbitrary  measures  that  the  government  was 
seriously  disorganized,  and  he  left  it  with  both  treasury 
and  army  pitifully  weak.^  His  successor,  Janssens,  had 
only  a  "  soi-disant  armee,"  as  he  said,  in  which  there  were 
scarcely  more  than  a  hundred  European  troops.  Most  of 
his  officers  were  half-breeds,  and  the  body  of  the  troops 
was  composed  of  natives  serving  under  compulsion,  who 
were  totally  unreliable.  A  short  campaign  was  enough 
to  rout  this  mob.  The  Governor  General  wrote  that  if 
he  had  won  the  last  battle  he  should  not  have  known 
what  to  do,  as  all  his  resources  were  exhausted  and  he 
could  not  have  continued  to  rule.^ 

Java  was  conquered  by  the  joint  action  of  the  British 
government  and  the  English  East  India  Company,  under 
an  agreement  by  which  the  English  relations  with  it  were 
to  cease  after  the  destruction  of  the  Dutch-French  ascend- 
ency, and  it  was  to  be  turned  over  to  the  natives. ^     The 

1  Summary  of  Daendels's  military  reforms  in  article  "Zeven  bannel- 
ingen,"  TNI.,  1860,  22  :  2,  p.  147.  M.  L.  van  Deventer,  Opk.,  13,  Inleidlng, 
passim,  thinks  that  Daendels  was  largely  responsible  for  the  British 
conquest. 

2  Governor  General  Janssens  to  Minister,  October,  1811,  Jonge,  Opk., 
13:546ff. 

8  The  Governor  General  of  British  India  received  from  the  Secret  Com- 
mittee of  the  East  India  Company  instructions,  dated  Aug.  31,  1810,  to 
expel  the  enemy  from  Java  and  their  other  settlements  in  the  East.  "  It 
is  by  no  means  our  wish,  or  that  of  his  Majesty's  government,  that  they 
should  be  permanently  occupied  as  British  colonies  ;  and  that  observation 
applies  not  only  to  the  unhealthiness  of  Batavia,  but  to  the  general  inexpe- 
diency of  extending  our  military  establishments.  We  merely  wish  to  expel 
the  enemy  from  all  their  settlements  in  those  seas,  to  destroy  all  the  forts, 
batteries,  and  works  of  defence,  .  .  .  wishing  to  leave  the  possession  of 
these  settlements  to  the  occupation  of  the  natives."  M.  L.  van  Peveuler. 
Ned.  Gezag,  4. 


166  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

resources  and  possibilities  of  Java  were  still  unknown  in 
Europe  ;  the  British  seem  to  have  judged  the  island 
from  the  unfavorable  outcome  of  the  Dutch  East  India 
Company,  and  to  have  decided  that  it  was  dangerous  to 
their  Eastern  interests  while  it  continued  under  French 
rule,  but  that  it  offered  no  hope  of  gain  to  themselves. ^ 
To  the  leader  of  the  British  expedition,  Lord  Minto,  the 
evacuation  which  the  government  had  decided  upon 
appeared  in  a  very  different  light  ;  the  abandonment  of 
Java,  "  unarmed  to  the  vengeance  and  cupidity  of  the 
Native  Tribes,"  seemed  "  absolutely,  because  morally, 
impossible."  2 

No  opposition  developed  in  England  against  the  tem- 
porary occupation  of  Java,  but  throughout  the  five  years 
of  British  rule  the  status  of  the  government  remained  in 
an  uncertainty  which  was  a  source  of  irritation  to  both 
Dutch  and  British.  While  the  British  government  took 
the  ground  that  it  was  merely  holding  the  island  until  it 
could  safely  be  restored  to  the  Netherlands  at  the  conclu- 
sion of  a  general  peace  in  Europe,  there  were  indications 
that  it  meant  to  keep  it  permanently  as  it  did  keep  other 
of  the  Dutch  possessions.  Meanwhile  the  British  rulers 
in  Java  were  forced  to  carry  out  their  plans  with  the  feel- 
ing that  at  any  time  they  might  be  dispossessed,  and  that 
whatever  reforms  they  introduced  might  be  swept  away. 

1  M.  L.  van  Deventer,  NG. ,  ii  ff .  The  island  was  ceded  by  England 
later  "in  total  ignorance  of  its  value  to  the  Dutch."  Raffles,  Mem.,  286. 
Hume  maintained,  in  the  debate  on  the  treaty  of  1824,  that  the  cession  of 
Java  "took  place  in  utter  ignorance  of  the  interests  of  England."  Han- 
sard, New  Ser.,  vol.  11,  Lend.,  1825,  col.  1447. 

2  Lord  Minto  to  the  Secret  Committee  of  the  East  India  Company, 
Dec.  6,  1811,  M.  L.  van  Deventer,  NG.,  5.  The  last  words  are  italicized 
in  the  printed  document,  but  I  believe  this  to  be  the  work  of  the  editor. 


V  PERIOD  OF  BRITISH  RULE  167 

In  August,  1814,  Great  Britain  formally  contracted  with 
the  Netherlands  to  return  Java,  and  other  possessions 
which  the  Dutch  had  held  in  1803,  and  which  had  since 
been  occupied  b}^  the  British.  The  execution  of  this 
agreement  was  delayed  for  a  time  by  the  return  of  Napo- 
leon, which  encouraged  the  British  governor  of  Java  to 
liope  that  it  might  yet  be  made  a  British  dependency,  but 
at  the  end  of  1815  Dutch  commissioners  left  Europe  to 
take  possession  of  the  island,  and  the  formal  transfer  of 
it  to  them  was  made  in  August,  1816. 

During  the  period  of  the  British  occupation  Java  was 
ruled  as  a  part  of  British  India,  dependent  on  the  govern- 
ment at  Calcutta.  The  Governor  General  of  British 
India,  Lord  Minto,  stayed  six  weeks  in  the  island  after 
the  conquest,  to  form  the  new  government  and  establish 
the  general  principles  that  it  was  to  follow.  In  a  procla- 
mation issued  during  the  campaign  ^  he  promised  that  the 
natives  should  enjoy  the  same  position  as  was  held  by  the 
inhabitants  of  British  India,  that  the  Dutch  should  be 
eligible  to  office  under  the  new  government,  and  that  the 
Dutch  laws  should  remain  in  force  with  certain  modifica- 
tions. In  regard  to  the  government's  fiscal  policy  the 
proclamation  promised  that  "the  vexatious  system  of 
monopoly  will  be  revised,  and  a  more  beneficial  and 
politic  principle  of  administration  will  be  taken  into 
consideration,"  without  making  any  specific  pledges. 
In  instructions  given  to  his  subordinate  on  the  establish- 
ment of  the  government.  Lord  Minto  referred  to  the 
Dutch  policy  of  contingents  as  "  a  vicious  system,  to  be 
abandoned  as  soon  as  possible,"  and  recommended  a  radi- 
cal reform  in  the  land  system  to  stimulate  the  industry  of 

1  nth  Sept.,  1811.     Raffles,  Mem.,  103  ff. 


168  THE   DUTCH   IN  JAVA  chap. 

the  natives.  1  He  regarded  his  duties  completed,  however, 
in  outlining  in  this  general  way  the  policy  which  the  new 
government  was  to  follow  ;  there  is  no  evidence  that  he 
determined  it  in  its  details. ^  The  responsibility  for  the 
settlement  of  all  the  most  important  questions  of  govern- 
ment and  policy  was  laid  upon  the  new  Lieutenant  Gov- 
ernor, who  was  given  a  legislative  power  that  made  him 
practically  absolute  in  Java,  and  only  nominally  depend- 
ent on  the  Governor  General  at  Calcutta.  This  power 
was  exercised  from  1811  to  a  date  shortly  previous  to 
the  -Dutch  restoration  in  1816  by  Thomas  Stamford  Raf- 
fles, who  made  the  short  period  of  his  rule  one  of  the  most 
important  in  the  whole  history  of  Java,  by  the  originality 
and  vigor  with  which  he  met  the  problems  before  him. 

Raffles  was  the  son  of  a  ship  captain  in  the  merchant 
service,  was  born  at  sea,  and  had  few  advantages  in  his 
early  years.  When  only  fourteen  years  old  he  became  a 
clerk  in  the  East  India  House,  and  distinguished  himself 
by  such  industry  and  ability  that  after  ten  years'  service 
he  was  sent  out  to  Pinang  (Straits  Settlements)  as  under- 
secretary in  the  newly  organized  government.^  Raffles 
was  remarkable  among  his  contemporaries,  not  only  for 
his  power   to  work,  which  was  prodigious,*  but  for  his 

1  Raffles,  Mem.,  212. 

2  This  can  be  inferred  from  his  letter  of  December,  1811,  M.  L.  van 
Deventer,  NG.,  9.  Norman,  BH.,  43,  knows  of  no  instructions  more 
specific  left  by  Minto. 

3  According  to  one  version,  Raffles  got  his  preferment  by  a  discreditable 
marriage.  M.  L.  van  Deventer,  NG.,  vii.  Egerton,  p.  8,  says  that 
Boulger  ("Life  of  Raffles,"  Lond.,  1897)  has  disproved  this.  I  have 
not  seen  Boulger's  book.  It  is  severely  criticised  by  one  of  the  best 
Dutch  historians.  See  Van  der  Kemp,  "  De  Singapoorsche  Papieroorlog," 
Bijd.  TLV.,  1898,  6  :  5  :  389  ff. 

*  He  could  write  a  letter  himself  and  dictate  to  two  assistants  at  the 
same  time ;  he  wrote  the  important  minute  of  1814  at  a  rate  that  kept 


V  PERIOD   OF  BRITISH   RULE  169 

scientific  interests.  He  acquired  a  knoAvledge  of  some  of 
the  Eastern  languages,  and  was  soon  recognized  as  an 
authority  in  knowledge  of  the  conditions  and  institutions 
of  the  Malay  States.  Transferred  to  Malacca  in  1809,  he 
used  his  opportunities  to  gather  information  about  the 
islands  of  the  archipelago,  was  taken  on  the  Java  expe- 
dition of  1811  as  secretary  to  Lord  Minto,  and  Avas  chosen 
by  him  as  the  person  best  fitted  to  organize  and  carry  on 
the  government  of  the  new  conquest. 

The  character  of  Raifies  has  been  severely  criticised  by 
Dutch  historians,  who  can  point  to  more  than  one  instance 
in  which  his  deeds  do  not  accord  with  his  professions  and 
are  not  consistent  with  each  other.^  There  has  never 
been  any  question  of  the  man's  ability  or  of  the  impor- 
tance of  the  work  that  he  did.  There  were  many  flaws  in 
the  conception  and  execution  of  his  plans,  and  few  of 
these  plans  were  brought  to  fruition  until  long  after  he 
had  left  the  island.  His  efforts  should  be  judged,  how- 
ever, by  direction  as  well  as  distance.  Raffles  was  great, 
not  in  the  results  that  he  achieved,  but  in  the  ideals  that 
he  established,  which  have  been  a  power  in  all  later 
reforms.  He  tried  to  do  alone,  in  a  few  years,  and  with 
the  uncertainty  of  his  position  constantly  before  him, 
what   generations  of   later   workers   have   accomplished. 

three  clerks  busy  copying.  Mem.,  p.  210.  He  worked  more  hours  a  day 
in  the  enervating  climate  of  Java  than  most  men  can  work  under  the 
most  favorable  conditions,  and  wore  out  his  subordinates  by  the  trips, 
sometimes  sixty  or  seventy  miles  a  day,  that  he  made  when  he  was  super- 
intending the  introduction  of  his  tax  system,  ib.,  2G0,  209. 

1  Cf.  M.  L.  van  Deventer,  NG.,  x  ff.,  xxxiii,  xl,  1;  Veth,  Java,  2 :  295  ff. 
Veth  says  that  the  judgment  of  the  man  has  grown  constantlj'  less  favor- 
able, of  his  work  constantly  more  favorable,  as  time  has  brought  to  light 
new  sources  of  information.  Norman,  46  ff.,  315,  forms  a  more  favorable 
estimate  of  his  character  than  later  writers  among  the  Dutch. 


170  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

"I  have  been  forced  to  act,  in  every  measure  of  impor- 
tance, on  my  own  responsibility,"  he  wrote  to  a  friend  in 
1814.  His  superiors  in  British  India  were  afraid  to 
involve  themselves  in  the  execution  of  far-reaching  plans 
which  might  at  any  time  be  interrupted  by  the  restora- 
tion of  the  Dutch  to  power. ^  He  secured  from  his  asso- 
ciates, both  English  and  Dutch,  a  support  which  he 
recognizes  in  generous  terms,  but  he  was  still  the  only 
source  in  Java  from  which  all  reforms  came ;  he  found  in 
others  more  criticism  than  encouragement,  and  only  a 
fraction  of  the  restless  energy  which  he  himself  displayed. 
His  letters  and  reports  are  full  of  references  to  the  pro- 
visional character  of  his  government. ^  Viewed  in  the 
light  of  the  difficulties  under  which  he  worked,  the  faults 
of  Raffles's  career  as  Lieutenant  Governor  grow  smaller, 
and  his  failure  appears  oniy  as  a  deferred  success. 

Of  the  changes  made  by  Raffles  in  the  system  of  colonial 
policy  by  far  the  most  important  was  the  reform  that  he 
attempted  in  the  fiscal  relations  of  natives  and  Europeans. 
For  the  first  time  a  vigorous  effort  was  made  to  carry  into 
effect  the  system  that  Dirk  van  Hogendorp  had  advocated, 
that  had  been  rejected  by  the  Dutch  commission  of  1803, 
and  had  been  thrust  far  into  the  background  by  the  reac- 
tionary policy  of  Daendels.  It  is  probable  that  Hogen- 
dorp's  ideas  were  known  to  Raffles,  as  he  had  in  his 
council  two  Dutch  officials  who  could  not  have  been 
ignorant  of   them.^     There   is   a   world-wide   difference, 

1  Letter  to  English,  Mem.,  227. 

2  Mem.,  205,  22G  ;  Sub.,  16,  27G  ;  Van  Deventer,  NG.,  51. 

8  In  Hist.,  1 :  xxxviii  and  301,  Raffles  quotes  from  Hogendorp's  report 
"  recommending  a  policy  similar  to  that  which  we  subsequently  pursued." 
I  do  not  remember  to  have  seen  Hogendorp's  name  mentioned  in  the  min- 
utes of  Raffles's  administration,  and  Muntinghe,  in  his  minute  of  1813, 


V  PERIOD  OF  BRITISH   RULE  171 

however,  between  the  formulation  of  a  plan  in  the  ab- 
stract and  the  serious  attempt  to  realize  it;  and  the 
execution  of  the  plan  was  all  Raffles's  own.  While  Lord 
Minto  had  urged  a  departure  from  the  old  contingent 
system,  he  had  left  no  specific  suggestions  for  any  substi- 
tute policy  and  had  discouraged  rather  than  urged  very 
active  measures.  "  On  this  branch,"  he  wrote,  "  nothing 
must  be  done  that  is  not  mature,  because  the  exchange  is 
too  extensive  to  be  suddenly  or  ignorantly  attempted."  ^ 
Raffles  said  that  the  system  which  he  adopted  had  been  in 
contemplation  since  the  fall  of  the  native  state  of  Djokjo- 
karta  (June,  1812),2  about  nine  months  after  his  arrival. 
At  that  time  he  had  a  commission  of  officials  at  work 
investigating  the  practicability  of  the  change;  they 
reported  favorably  on  it,  and  in  October,  1813,  Raffles 
issued  a  proclamation  publishing  the  reforms  that  he 
proposed  to  introduce.  He  had  asked  the  opinion  of  the 
government  at  Calcutta  in  1812,  and  as  no  reply  had 
come  from  there,  he  proceeded  on  his  own  responsibility. ^ 

seems  to  have  purposely  avoided  describing  Hogendorp's  work,  though  it 
is  hard  to  believe  that  he  did  not  know  it.  It  may  be  that  Muntinghe  did 
not  want  to  detract  from  the  credit  of  Raffles's  work.  Sillem,  "  Dirk  van 
Hogendorp,"  361  ff. ,  thinks  that  Muntinghe  and  afterward  Elout  refrained 
from  referring  to  Hogendorp  by  name  from  motives  of  policy ;  Hogen- 
dorp's ideas  were  conceived  to  have  a  revolutionary  flavor.  Raffles  says, 
Sub.,  78,  "It  was  Mr.  Muntinghe  who  first  pointed  out  to  me  the  gross 
errors,  and  the  still  grosser  corruptions  of  the  former  government ;  and 
it  was  from  a  confidence  in  his  opinion,  and  a  reliance  on  his  unerring 
judgment,  that  I  first  conceived  it  practicable  to  work  the  change  which 
has  been  wrought." 

1  Raffles,  Memoir,  212  ;  same  in  Substance,  4. 

2  Sub.,  276. 

3  Memoir,  221,  letter  to  Lord  Minto,  January,  1814.  This  must  have 
crossed  a  letter  from  the  Secretary  of  the  Governor  General,  Jan.  15, 
1814,  reproving  RafBes  for  the  suddenness  of  his  changes,  and  asserting 
that  they  had  not  been  referred  to  the  Calcutta  government. 


172  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

The  considerations  leading  Raffles  to  a  change  of  system 
are  stated  so  fully  and  concisely  in  the  minute  of  1813 
that  they  can  best  be  given  in  his  own  words. ^  "The 
loss  derived  to  the  public  by  a  delivery  of  produce,  the 
sale  of  which  may  be  uncertain,  and  the  waste  and  expense 
of  which  is  unavoidable,  is  not  a  more  urgent  reason  for 
an  alteration  than  its  oppression  upon  the  inhabitants 
and  its  discouragement  to  agriculture.  While  the  regent 
is  bound  to  deliver  a  certain  quantity  of  money  and 
produce,  and  the  feudal  services  of  the  people  can  be 
called  for,  to  an  unlimited  extent,  by  former  usage,  and 
the  influence  of  ancient  habits,  there  can  be  no  security 
against  oppression,  nor  any  excitement  to  industry ;  and 
the  revenue  of  the  State  must  equally  suffer  by  the  num- 
ber of  intermediate  hands  through  whom  it  is  collected, 
by  the  expense  of  subordinate  officers  in  charge  of  the 
produce,  by  wastage  of  the  produce  itself,  and  by  the 
irregularities  and  temptations  to  which  the  system  gives 
rise."  Raffles  believed  that  a  change  of  system  was 
demanded  not  only  in  justice  to  the  natives,  who  were 
reduced  to  the  lowest  condition  and  were  driven  from  one 
part  to  another  of  the  island  by  the  oppressions  which 
they  suffered,  but  also  by  the  fiscal  interests  of  the  gov- 
ernment. Judging  the  matter  even  in  the  light  of  Mun- 
tinghe's  dictum  "that  every  colony  does,  or  ought  to 
exist,  for  the  benefit  of  the  mother-country,"  he  thought 
that  "  it  was  as  necessary,  in  a  financial  point  of  view,  to 
introduce  an  amendment  in  the  revenue  system,  as  it  was 
consistent  with  justice  and  sound  policy,  and  congenial 
to  the  principles  of  a  British  administration,  to  release 
the  numerous  inhabitants  of  this  island  from  feudal  sla- 
1  Raffles,  Sub.,  263  ff. 


V  PERIOD   OF  BRITISH   RULE  173 

very  and  bondage."  ^  As  I  shall  proceed  immediately  to  a 
description  of  the  practical  workings  of  Raffles's  system,  it 
will  not  be  necessary  to  stop  here  to  analyze  in  detail  the 
arguments  by  which  he  advocated  its  adoption.  There 
was  evidently  in  his  mind  a  rather  vague  picture  of  the 
contrast  that  existed  between  conditions  as  he  found  them 
in  Java  and  had  left  them  in  civilized  Europe,  and  so 
strong  an  idea  of  the  advantages  of  the  advanced  stage  of 
civilization,  with  its  just  government  and  free  enterprise, 
that  the  difficulties  of  bringing  the  people  of  Java  to  this 
stage  were  lost  to  his  sight. 

The  system  which  suggested  itself  as  offering  the 
greatest  possibilities  of  improvement  was  "that  which 
has  been  adopted  in  British  India,  the  benefits  and 
advantages  of  which  have  stood  the  test  of  experience." 
This  system,  as  he  proposed  to  introduce  it,  was  summa- 
rized in  the  following  terms  :  ^  — 

"  1st.  The  entire  abolition  of  all  forced  delivery  of 
produce  at  inadequate  rates,  and  of  all  feudal  services, 
with  the  establishment  of  a  perfect  freedom  in  cultivation 
and  trade. 

"  2d.  The  assumption,  on  the  part  of  the  government, 
of  the  immediate  superintendence  of  the  lands,  with  the 
revenues  and  rents  thereof,  without  the  intervention  of 
the  regents,  whose  ofiice  should  in  future  be  confined  to 
public  duties. 

"  3d.  The  renting  out  of  the  lands  so  assumed  in 
large  or  small  estates,  according  to  local  circumstances, 
on  leases  for  a  moderate  term." 

It  would  be  hard  to  imagine  a  more  sweeping  change 

1  Min.  of  1813,  Sub.,  254  ;  Min.  of  1814,  Sub.,  10-15. 
aMin.,  1813,  Sub.,  261. 


174  THE  DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

in  the  whole  system  of  government  than  that  implied  in 
these  few  sentences.  The  native  officers  who  had  hereto- 
fore ruled  the  people  under  the  Dutch  were  henceforth 
to  have  their  powers  restricted  to  a  narrow  field ;  instead 
of  paying  themselves  by  what  they  could  get  from  their 
unhappy  subjects,  they  were  to  receive  such  grants  from 
the  superior  government  as  would  make  it  "  both  their 
duty  and  their  interest  to  encourage  industry  and  to 
protect  the  inhabitants."  Their  place  as  actual  rulers 
was  to  be  taken  by  European  officials,  who  were  to 
introduce  and  administer  an  entirely  new  fiscal  system ; 
the  people  were  to  pay  the  government  dues  on  the 
European  basis  of  the  rental  value  of  their  lands,  instead 
of  on  the  native  basis,  a  network  of  personal  and  secret 
considerations  which  baffled  the  scrutiny  of  any  European 
government.  Finally,  to  touch  only  on  the  most  impor- 
tant modifications,  the  government  was  to  reform  the 
whole  system  of  indirect  taxation  in  the  interest  of  free 
industry  and  trade,  by  abolishing  the  internal  tolls  and 
transport  duties,  and  taking  under  its  own  administration 
the  customs  duties  and  salt  tax,  which  had  heretofore 
been  farmed  out.^ 

The  central  part  of  Raffles's  system  was  the  land-tax, 
which  was  to  absorb  all  the  multiform  dues  and  services 
paid  by  the  people  under  native  rule,  and  was  to  be,  as  it 
has  been  in  British  India,  the  mainstay  of  the  government 
treasury.  Raffles  admitted  the  great  variations  in  the 
amount  of  these  dues  in  different  districts  of  the  island, 
but  believed  that  they  might  be  generally  commuted,  one 

1  In  this  sketch  of  Raffles's  origmal  proposals  I  have  supplemented  the 
statement  in  the  minute  of  June,  1813,  by  the  summary  of  changes 
announced  in  the  proclamation  of  October,  1813,  Substance,  173  ff. 


V  PERIOD   OF   BRITISH  RULE  175 

district  with  another,  for  a  payment  in  money,  equivalent 
to  about  two-fifths  of  the  annual  gross  rice  produce  of  the 
soil.i  This  furnished  the  basis  for  assessing  the  new 
tax.  The  lands  of  the  island  were  divided  into  two  sorts, 
irrigated  (^sawaK)  and  dry  (tagaV) ;  each  sort  was  divided 
again  into  three  classes  according  to  its  average  yield. 
Each  class  of  land  was  to  pay  as  tax  a  certain  proportion 
of  its  crop.  Thus  sawah  lands  of  the  first  class  paid  one- 
half  of  the  estimated  product  of  rice,  of  the  second  class 
two-fifths,  and  of  the  third  class  one-third,  while  the  dry 
lands,  planted  largely  with  maize,  paid  smaller  propor- 
tions ranging  down  to  one-fourth. ^  Raffles  desired  to 
leave  to  the  cultivators  of  lands  of  varying  productive- 
ness about  the  same  amount  for  each,  taking  the  surplus 
for  the  government.  While  this  scale  was  set  to  guide 
the  officials  in  introducing  the  tax,  Raffles  did  not  expect 
at  first  to  raise  the  full  amounts  as  they  were  set  forth, 
and  ordered  that  these  proportions  should  be  regarded 
simply  as  maxima.  Raffles  desired  that  the  tax  should  be 
collected  in  money  so  far  as  it  proved  practicable,  and 
believed  that  the  introduction  of  a  money  tax  would 
bring  into  circulation  great  amounts  of  hoarded  coin, 
but  he  saw  that  it  was  inadvisable  to  make  an  absolute 
requirement  of  money  payment.  When  circumstances 
made  it  necessary,  the  tax  could  be  paid  in  kind,  but  only 

1  Sub.,  29,  Instructions  to  Commissioners  in  Eastern  Districts,  Septem- 
ber, 1812  ;  Minute  of  September,  1813,  Van  Deventer,  NG.,  18  ff.,  practi- 
cally identical  language.  I  have  referred  above,  in  the  chapter  on  the 
native  organization,  to  the  great  variation  in  the  dues  of  the  natives, 
which  made  a  fair  average  impossible. 

2  Rev.  Instructions,  1814,  Sub.,  198.  The  figures  of  annual  yields 
according  to  which  the  lands  are  classified  are  given,  for  Soerabaya,  in 
the  minute  of  1814,  i6.,  137. 


176  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

in  rice,  and  not  in  the  various  products  which  the  Dutch 
had  formerly  taken  as  contingents. 

The  most  difficult  point  to  be  decided  by  Raffles  in  the 
introduction  of  the  land-tax  was  the  question  of  the  class 
of  natives  with  whom  he  should  deal  in  the  levying  and 
collection  of  the  tax.  To  use  the  phraseology  of  British 
India,  he  had  to  choose  between  the  ryotivari^  the  zamin- 
dari,  and  other  possible  modes  of  settlement.  So  far  as 
concerned  existing  conditions  in  the  native  organization, 
he  was  convinced,  from  his  own  observations  and  those  of 
most  of  his  officials,  that  there  was  between  the  sovereign 
and  the  cultivator  no  class  whose  rights  he  was  bound  to 
regard.  As  has  been  stated  above,  in  the  description  of 
the  native  organization,  the  nobles  held  their  lands  as  a 
rule  only  during  tenure  of  office  or  at  the  will  of  the 
sovereign;  the  tendency  to  heredity  of  tenure  had  not 
proceeded  far  enough  to  force  the  European  government 
to  respect  it.^  Raffles  formulated,  therefore,  the  general 
statement  that  the  sovereign  was  the  only  lord  of  the  soil, 
and  that  the  European  government,  taking  the  place  of 
the  sovereign,  had  the  sole  right  of  property  in  the  land 
of  the  island. 2 

1  This  would  apply  properly  to  the  poesaka  or  official  lands,  but  not  to 
the  lands  cleared  op  last,  which  represented  the  investment  of  private 
capital  and  covered  large  areas.  Raffles  did  not  recognize  the  existence 
of  this  latter  class  of  lands. 

2  From  this  legal  fiction,  for  in  view  of  the  variety  of  conditions  exist- 
ing in  the  land  tenures  of  different  parts  of  Java  it  was  nothing  more, 
arose  the  term  land-rent  (Dutch,  landrente),  which  has  remained  the 
customary  name  for  the  land-tax  in  Java  to  the  present  day.  It  is  not 
the  place  here  to  discuss  the  justice  of  the  view  that  the  sovereign  of  Java 
was  the  actual  proprietor  of  all  the  land.  This  was  formally  pronounced 
to  be  the  law  by  the  Dutch  government  not  many  years  ago,  and  has 
furnished  a  subject  for  extended  discussion  by  Dutch  legal  historians.  In 
its  practical  application  the  theory  seems  to  have  worked  no  harm. 


V  PERIOD   OF  BRITISH  RULE  177 

The  only  motives  to  guide  Raffles  in  the  choice  of  the 
natives  with  whom  he  was  to  deal  being  those  of  con- 
venience and  policy,  he  decided  at  first  not  to  attempt  a 
direct  contact  with  the  cultivators,  but  to  lease  the  lands 
to  the  lowest  official  class,  represented  by  the  bekels  and 
village  heads.  He  realized  that  the  greater  the  number 
of  native  officials  between  the  government  and  the  cul- 
tivator the  more  loss  and  oppression  there  would  be,  but 
he  was  afraid  to  offend  the  classes  with  political  influence 
by  excluding  them  from  administration  entirely,  and 
demanded  only  that  the  commissioners  who  introduced 
the  tax  should  grant  the  leases  to  persons  as  near  the 
actual  cultivator  as  possible.  The  country  would  then 
be  divided  up  into  larger  or  smaller  estates,  according 
to  local  circumstances.  The  large  estates,  however, 
were  to  be  considered  only  as  due  to  a  necessary  com- 
promise, and  as  temporary.  Leases  were  to  be  granted 
only  for  a  short  period,  three  years  at  most,  that  the 
government  might  keep  in  its  hands  the  power  to  revise 
the  settlement  as  its  understanding  of  the  conditions  and 
of  its  interests  increased.  Raffles  spoke,  in  the  early 
history  of  his  land-tax  plans,  of  arranging  a  settlement 
for  a  longer  period,  for  seven  or  ten  years,  or  even  in 
perpetuity,!  but  the  instructions  from  Calcutta,  where 
the  permanent  settlement  was  known,  were  adverse  to 
his  plan,  and  advised  him  that  the  home  government 
would  certainly  disapprove  it.^ 

A  beginning  was  made  with  the  introduction  of  the  land 
revenue  on  the  basis  of  Raffles's  minute  and  instructions  of 
1813.  The  settlement  was  made  ordinarily  for  one  year 
and  with  the  heads   of  villages.      Within  four  months, 

1  Letter  to  Hammond,  October,  1813,  Mem.,  194.  2  /^^(^.^  197. 


178  THE  DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

however,  of  the  formal  beginning  of  the  land  settlement, 
Raffles's  ideas  had  changed  on  the  question  of  administra- 
tion, and  in  his  minute  and  instructions  of  1814  he 
expressed  a  decided  preference  for  the  ryotwari  or  indi- 
vidual settlement.  It  is  possible,  as  Norman  suggests, 
that  in  the  interval  Raffles  had  heard  of  the  experiment 
with  ryotwari  settlement  made  by  the  British  government 
in  the  districts  under  Madras,  and  modified  his  plans  by 
reason  of  this  new  information.^  The  reasons  which 
Raffles  gives  for  the  change  are  in  themselves  sufficient  to 
explain  it.  The  village  settlement,  he  says,^  "  was  simply 
a  step  arising  from  the  necessity  of  the  occasion,  the  im- 
practicability of  at  once  entering  upon  a  more  detailed 
plan,  and  which,  at  the  moment  of  its  adoption,  was  meant 
to  be  considered  as  temporary,  to  be  no  longer  adhered  to 
if,  on  the  acquisition  of  further  knowledge,  a  more  partic- 
ular system  of  management  should  be  advisable." 

"  In  the  period  that  has  elapsed  since  the  first  settle- 
ment a  sufficient  knowledge  has  been  obtained,  by  the 
most  serious  investigation  into  the  whole  minutiae  of  the 
revenue  affairs  of  the  country,  to  render  government 
more  fully  competent  to  carry  into  execution  that  more 
detailed  plan,  which  it  was  always  in  their  contemplation 
to  introduce,  as  early  as  might  be  practicable. 

"The  agency  of  intermediate  renters  is  considered  as 
quite  unnecessary  to  be  adopted  in  future.      It  is  deemed 

1  BH.,  215  n.  Raffles's  letter  to  Minto,  Feb.  13,  1814,  Mem.,  224,  says 
that  he  adopted  the  ryotwari  settlement  without  knowledge  of  its  intro- 
duction elsewhere,  but  in  his  minute  of  Feb.  11,  1814  (Sub.,  194),  be 
refers  to  the  ryotwari  settlement  "as  it  is  termed  in  western  India, 
where  it  is  understood  to  have  been  advantageously  introduced."  It  is 
hard  to  explain  this  inconsistency  to  the  advantage  of  Raffles's  candor. 

2  Rev.  Instructions,  1814,  Sub.,  193. 


V  PERIOD   UF   BRITISH   RULE  179 

that  such  a  plan  of  settlement  will  leave  the  bulk  of  the 
people  entirely  at  the  mercy  of  a  numerous  set  of  chiefs, 
who,  however  well  they  may  have  hitherto  conducted 
themselves,  would  certainly,  in  such  case,  possess  an  abil- 
ity of  injury  and  oppression,  against  which  the  ruling 
power  would  have  left  itself  no  adequate  means  of 
prevention  or  redress,  and  which  cannot  therefore  be 
permitted  consistently  with  the  principles  of  good 
government. 

"  It  has  therefore  been  resolved,  that  this  intermediate 
system  be  entirely  done  away,  the  government  determin- 
ing to  act,  in  future,  through  its  intermediate  officers, 
directly  with  each  individual  cultivator,  and  to  stand  for- 
ward, in  short,  the  sole  collector  and  enjoyer  of  its  own 
revenues." 

The  great  fault  of  the  Dutch  system  Raffles  found  to  be 
that  "  no  direct  control  or  communication  was  held  with 
the  people";  1  the  introduction  to  the  minute  of  1814, 
giving  the  reasons  for  adopting  the  individual  settlement, 
described  in  detail  the  abuses  which  have  been  made  known 
already  to  the  reader.  "  It  appeared,  therefore,  absolutely 
necessary  to  proceed  at  once  to  the  root ;  and  by  estab- 
lishing a  connection  with  the  peasantry,  by  removing,  as 
much  as  practicable,  all  restrictions  on  their  trade  and 
industry,  by  satisfying  the  vanity  of  their  chiefs  and 
those  claims  which  the  actual  possession  of  authority  en- 
titled them  to  entertain,  and  by  combining  the  acknowl- 
edged principles  of  European  legislature  with  the  peculiar 
usages  and  customs  of  the  country, —  to  introduce  a  uni- 
form and  general  system  throughout,  calculated  to  draw 
forth  the  extensive  resources  of  this  colony  and  to 
iMin.,  1814,  Sub.,  8. 


180  THE  DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

advance    the    wealth   and   happiness    of    its    numerous 
population."  ^ 

The  advantages  of  the  village  settlement  were  urged  by 
one  of  the  British  officials  engaged  in  the  introduction  of 
the  land-tax  ;  it  was  the  system  to  which  the  people  were 
accustomed,  ^  it  was  the  easiest  to  introduce  and  administer, 
and  it  made  proper  provision  for  natives  of  the  official  class, 
who  might  if  set  aside  become  pensioned  drones,  vagabonds, 
or  dangerous  characters.^  The  proposal  was  rejected  by 
Raffles,  in  spite  of  the  manifest  advantages  it  promised,  be- 
cause it  conflicted  with  the  principle  he  had  adopted  of  direct 
government  of  the  individual  natives.  "  The  collection 
of  the  revenue,  under  such  a  system,  is  no  doubt  rendered 
much  easier,  and  it  was  still  more  so  when  collected 
through  the  regents.  But  the  revenue  is  still  farmed  to 
an  intermediate  class  :  the  cultivators  do  not  fall  immedi- 
ately under  the  protecting  influence  of  government;  a 
large  proportion  of  the  revenue  of  the  country  is  absorbed 
before  it  reaches  the  government  treasury ;  the  real 
resources  of  the  country  are  not  known  ;  and,  in  short, 
though  the  public  revenue  may  have  been  partially  im- 
proved by  setting  aside  the  regent,  and  the  people  may 


1  Sub.,  21-22. 

2  See  above,  the  chapter  on  the  native  organization. 

3  Report  of  Colonel  Adams  on  the  settlement  of  Soerabaya,  Min.,  1814, 
Sub.,  118.  Crawford,  report  on  Kadoe,  urged  that  the  bekels  should  be 
considered  as  the  permanent  landholders,  and  that  the  settlement  should 
be  made  with  them.  As  the  bekels  were  the  agents  appointed  by  superior 
officials  to  collect  the  dues  of  the  native  organization,  this  proposal  looked 
to  the  introduction  of  the  zamindari  system.  The  proposal  was  rejected 
by  Raffles  on  the  ground  that  the  bekel  system  was  exceptional  and 
marked  a  degeneration  of  the  normal  organization.  Other  objections 
applied  as  well  to  this  system  as  to  the  system  of  village  settlement. 
Sub.,  109,  113,  115. 


V  PERIOD   0¥   BRITISH   RULE  181 

have  been  relieved  from  some  of  the  most  intolerable 
burdens,  the  main  object  in  view,  in  relieving  the  culti- 
vators from  the  oppression  of  their  chiefs,  and  drawing 
forth  the  actual  revenue  of  the  country,  is  far  from 
accomplished  under  such  a  system."  ^ 

It  was  the  adoption  by  Raffles  of  this  principle  of  direct 
contact  with  the  individuals  among  the  people,  without 
the  intervention  of  more  or  less  independent  native  offi- 
cials, which  stamped  his  policy  as  original  and  marked 
him  out  as  the  leader  in  the  new  school  of  colonial  gov- 
ernors. I  cannot  agree  with  Pierson's  statement,^  that 
the  great  novelty  in  Raffles's  system  was  the  introduction 
of  taxation  to  take  the  place  of  commercial  transactions 
as  a  source  of  revenue.  Some  of  the  contingents  required 
of  the  natives  under  the  old  system  represented  thorough- 
going commercialism  on  the  part  of  the  government,  an 
effort  to  direct  the  productive  power  of  the  natives  in  cer- 
tain channels  to  secure  certain  wares  for  the  European 
market.  There  were  true  taxes,  however,  under  the  old 
system,  both  direct  and  indirect.  The  Company's  rice 
contingent  was  as  much  deserving  of  the  name  of  tax  as 
Raffles's  land-rent,  which  could  be  paid  in  the  same  staple 
of  consumption.  The  great  and  only  contrast  between 
these  revenue  measures  of  the  old  system  and  the  ones 
proposed  by  Raffles  was  the  difference  in  administration, 
by  which  the  whole  process  of  assessment  and  collection 
was  to  be  brought  under  the  control  of  European  ideas  of 
honesty,  economy,  and  justice. 

The  reasons  for  the  failure  of  Raffles's  land-tax  can  be 

1  Sub.,  120-121. 

2  KP,,  27  ;  Pierson  follows  Muntinghe  here  without  a  sufficient  analysis 
of  his  reasoning  and  the  facts  he  cites. 


182  THE   DUTCH   IN  JAVA  chap. 

classed  under  two  heads:  first,  certain  faults  in  the  scheme 
and  in  the  way  in  which  Raffles  began  its  introduction, 
for  which  he  stands  directly  responsible;  second,  the  im- 
possibility under  the  conditions  of  the  native  organization 
of  introducing  any,  even  a  faultless,  scheme  of  the  kind, 
with  the  resources  that  Raffles  had  at  his  disposal. 

The  times  were  little  suited  for  such  a  serious  reform 
as  Raffles  undertook,  and  the  uncertainty  of  them  is  re- 
flected in  a  haste  and  rapidity  of  change  on  his  part  that 
could  be  attended  only  by  bad  results.  Within  a  year  he 
changed  from  leases  in  large  parcels  to  village  and  then  to 
individual  settlements,  prescribing  one  system  before  the 
other  had  been  introduced. ^  The  scheme  of  assessment 
was  very  far  from  attaining  the  object  for  which  it  was 
made,  of  taxing  equitably  the  holders  of  different  grades 
of  land,  and  imposed  an  undue  burden  on  the  poorer 
grades.2  Raffles  seems  moreover  to  have  done  little  to 
establish  a  scheme  of  assessment  that  could  be  generally 
applied  throughout  the  island  ;  the  one  that  he  gave  for 
the  eastern  districts  was  unsuited  by  reason  of  local 
variations  for  use  elsewhere,  and  he  had  to  leave  the  mat- 
ter of  assessment  largely  to  the  judgment  of  the  individual 
collectors. 3  The  plan  of  requiring  not  a  fixed  amount 
but  a  proportion  of  the  average  crop,  while  it  seemed  to 

1  M.  L.  van  Deventer,  NG.,  xcii.  Bruijn,  in  his  report  on  Bantam, 
1817,  says  that  lands  in  the  upper  districts  there  were  leased  to  native 
chiefs  in  1813,  to  village  head-men  in  1814,  and  to  the  common  people  in 
1815 ;  ib.,  149. 

2  Report  of  De  Sails  on  Pekalongan  and  Kedoe,  1816,  M.  L.  van 
Deventer,  NG.,  93. 

3  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  1  :  380,  report  of  1818  with  figures  ;  ib.,  2:4. 
This  led  to  great  differences  in  the  burden  of  the  land-tax  in  different 
localities. 


V  PERIOD   OF  BRITISH   RULE  183 

promise   to  the  government  the  maximum  that  it  could 
fairly  demand,  led  to  difficulties  and  frauds. ^ 

Theoretical  flaws  in  Raffles's  scheme  of  land-tax  are  of 
little  importance,  however,  in  view  of  the  way  in  which 
the  scheme  was  mangled  and  distorted  when  it  came  to  be 
practically  applied  to  the  native  organization.  When 
Raffles  wrote  his  minute  of  1814,  in  which  he  adopted  the 
system  of  individual  settlement  as  the  normal,^  he  had 
had  actual  experience  with  this  form  of  settlement  only 
in  its  application  in  districts  formerly  subject  to  Chinese 
farmers.  These  districts  were  peculiarly  suited  to  such  a 
settlement,  and  he  seems  to  have  been  encouraged  to  make 
it  general  because  of  the  success  it  had  in  them.^  Just  as 
soon  as  Raffles  attempted  to  extend  the  individual  settle- 
ment to  other  parts  of  Java,  he  entered  a  field  entirely 
unprepared  for  the  change,  and  the  administrative  appa- 
ratus at  his  command  broke  down  completely.  In  the 
minute  of  1813*  Raffles  said  that  he  desired  only  to  estab- 
lish "  the  justice,  practicability,  and  advantage  of  the  new 
system  ;  and  when  this  object  is  attained,"  he  said,  "  I 
shall  have  the  honor  to  suggest  the  plan  which  it  appears 
to  me  advisable  to  pursue,  in  effecting  its  gradual  and  ad- 


1  Report  of  Hopkins,  1814,  Probolingo  and  Bezoeki,  Sub.,  148. 

2  He  allowed  exceptions  to  the  practice  of  individual  settlement  then, 
but  village  settlements  were  to  be  made  only  for  short  times,  and  were  to 
be  changed  as  soon  as  possible  to  the  individual  form. 

8  It  was  said  that  the  new  system,  when  introduced  into  a  district  of 
Pekalongan  formerly  under  Chinese,  gave  a  net  revenue  nearly  fourfold 
that  formerly  received,  which  was  collected  with  perfect  ease.  Rai'Vs, 
Sub.,  35,  137.  On  the  other  hand,  De  Salis,  in  his  report  on  ''  "  '.^i-.^^a 
and  Kedoe,  1816,  said  that  one  district  that  had  formerly  been  leased  to  a 
Chinaman,  and  was  then  under  individual  land  settlement,  had  always 
been  in  arrears.     M.  L.  van  Deventer,  NG.,  92. 

*  Sub.,  277. 


184  THE   DUTCH   IN  JAVA  chap. 

Yiintageous  introduction."  The  minute  and  instructions 
of  1814  are  in  appearance  more  explicit  as  to  the  details  of 
the  mode  of  settlement,  but  in  the  face  of  the  variety 
of  conditions  found  in  the  native  organization  Raffles  had 
in  fact  to  leave  all  the  most  important  questions  to  be 
-settled  by  his  subordinates.  These  men,  who,  he  says,^ 
"in  the  short  space  of  six  months  enabled  me  to  effect  a 
revolution,  which  two  centuries  of  the  Dutch  adminis- 
tration could  scarcely  dream  of,"  numbered  all  together 
less  than  a  dozen.  The  force  was  ridiculously  inadequate 
to  carry  out  the  plans  which  involved  the  assessment  and 
collection  of  a  tax  on  some  four  or  five  million  individuals. 
A  prerequisite  to  the  success  of  Raffles's  scheme  was 
some  sort  of  cadastration.  Two  years  after  Raffles's  de- 
parture from  Java  a  report  ^  stated  that  the  survey  of  the 
fields  "had  not  been  begun  everywhere,  had  been  com- 
pleted nowhere,  and  no  reliance  could  be  put  on  the  exact- 
ness of  the  surveys  in  the  places  where  they  had  been 
made."  Some  of  the  districts  in  Bantam  could  not  be 
surveyed  because  of  the  prevailing  insecurity ,3  and  when 
something  was  made  that  passed  for  a  survey,  it  rested  not 
on  actual  measurements  by  Europeans  but  on  the  state- 
ments of  native  officials,  absolutely  untrustworthy  because 
of  the  prejudiced  source  from  which  they  came,  and  use- 
less because  they  were  expressed  in  native  land  measures 
varying  in  every  locality  of  the  island.  Raffles  had  made 
elaborate  plans  for  the  collection  of  the  necessary  data. 
The  residents  were  to  be  assisted  by  survey  officials  and 
collectors,  (few  of  whom  were  ever  appointed,)  in  the 
preparation  of  a  map  on  the  scale  of  an  inch  to  a  mile, 

1  Sub.,  74.        2  Report  of  1818,  S.  van  Deveuter,  LS.,  1 :  380. 
8  M.  L.  van  Deventer,  NG.,  148. 


V  PERIOD   OF  BRITISH   RULE  185 

which  was  to  show  the  amount  of  land  for  which  each 
village  was  responsible.  Within  the  village  blank  forms 
were  to  be  used  to  secure  information  about  the  popula- 
tion, the  varieties  and  yields  of  land,  the  way  in  which  it 
Avas  held,  etc.^  When  the  collector  had  thoroughly 
acquainted  himself  with  the  conditions  and  resources  of 
each  village,  he  was  to  proceed  to  the  assessment  of  the 
tax,  not  on  the  village  as  a  whole,  but  on  each  individual 
cultivator.  Even  Raffles's  sanguine  mind  realized  the 
necessity  of  putting  a  limit  somewhere  on  the  activities  of 
the  European  helpers  he  hoped  to  secure,  and  the  village 
head-man  was  made  a  government  official  for  the  settle- 
ment of  the  tax  on  individuals,  responsible  for  its  collec- 
tion and  possessed  of  the  powers  necessary  to  that  end.^ 
The  collector  was  to  make  out  a  statement  based  on  in- 
formation furnished  by  the  head-man,  giving  not  only  the 
total  tax  due  from  the  village,  but  also  the  details  of  its 
assessment ;  then  the  head-man  was  to  collect  the  tax  and 
return  to  each  cultivator  a  receipt  which  showed  in  full 
the  ground,  character,  and  amount  of  his  payment. ^  All 
this  was  to  be  done  in  a  country  in  which  scarcely  a  single 
village  head  could  read  and  write  !  * 

1  See  the  schedules,  lettered  A  to  G,  in  Sub.,  202  ff. 

2  Apparently,  the  futile  attempt  was  made  at  first  to  intrust  the  detailed 
settlement  to  European  officials.  In  Soerabaya,  1815,  the  collector  began 
to  divide  the  land  among  the  individual  inhabitants  and  make  a  separate 
settlement  v^^ith  each  ;  he  had  done  this  in  scarcely  fifty  of  the  twenty- 
seven  hundred  villages  subject  to  him  when  he  realized  the  hopelessness 
of  the  task,  and  continued  the  settlement  villagewise.  S.  van  Deventer, 
LS.,  1  :  374,  report  of  Van  Lawick  van  Pabst. 

8  Rev.  Instructions,  1814,  Sub.,  197,  212-215. 

*  Report  of  De  Bruijn,  Bantam,  1817,  M.  L.  van  Deventer,  NG„  151. 
De  Bruijn  said  that  one  native  writer  sufficed  for  a  district  including 
many  villages  far  distant  from  each  other. 


186  THE   DUTCH  IN   JAVA  chap. 

It  is  easy  to  imagine  the  result.  The  individual  settle- 
ment existed  only  in  name.  The  head-man,  when  called 
upon,  furnished  the  list  that  was  required  of  him,  but 
manufactured  it  for  the  occasion,  and  did  not  attempt  to 
make  it  an  accurate  picture  of  the  village  or  to  revise  it 
to  accord  with  changes  in  landholding.  A  considerable 
amount  of  paper  was  put  in  circulation,  but  it  might  just 
as  well  have  been  left  blank  as  to  be  covered  with  ink 
marks  which  few  could  read  and  to  which  none  attended. ^ 

Never  was  system  further  removed  from  the  plans  of 
its  projector  than  Raffles's  land-tax  as  it  was  actually 
carried  out.  Free  play  was  given  to  the  arbitrary  and 
unjust  action,  not  only  of  the  village  head-men  but  of  the 
European  officials  as  well,  who  with  the  best  intentions 
made  the  most  serious  mistakes.  Bewildered  by  the 
rapidity  of  the  changes  thrust  upon  them,  and  entirely 
ignorant  of  the  conditions  of  the  organization  to  which 
these  changes  were  to  be  applied,  they  threw  all  of 
Raffles's  instructions  to  the  winds,  and  followed  the  policy 
of  getting  what  they  could  from  the  natives  in  a  wild  and 
haphazard  way.  Raffles  complained  in  1814  that  one  of 
his  residents  had  deviated  from  instructions  in  important 
particulars,  had  given  out  no  tax  receipts  or  statements, 
had  retained  the  system  of  forced  deliveries  and  services  ; 
"thus,  by  connecting  together  two  systems  radically 
hostile  to  each  other,  the  whole  became  a  mass  of  confusion, 
productive  of  little  advantage  to  government  or  benefit  to 
the  country."  2  A  Dutch  official  who  investigated  the 
workings  of  the  tax  system  in  two  residencies,  reported  in 

1  Report  of  De  Salis,  Kedoe,  1816,  M.  L.  van  Deventer,  NG.,  94. 
Eeport  of  Servatius,  Cheribon,  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  1  :  369 ;  Report  of 
1818,  i6.,  1 :  381.  2  Sub.,  38. 


V  PERIOD   OF  BRITISH   RULE  187 

1816  ^  that  it  was  impossible  to  discover  any  principles 
which  the  British  official  had  followed  in  the  introduction 
of  the  tax  ;  he  had  acted  "by  way  of  guessing."  In  one 
province  ^  the  land-tax  was  established  on  such  a  basis  that 
it  would  yield  a  net  return  of  156,000  rupees  ;  a  new 
official  appointed  to  administer  it  in  1814  raised  it  to 
399,000  ;  the  next  year  another  official  adopted  a  new 
standard  and  made  the  figure  212,000.  The  amount 
actually  paid,  1815-1816,  was  89,000.  The  officials  did 
not  know  what  area  of  land  was  taxable,  what  the  yield  of 
the  land  was,  or  what  the  crop  was  worth  in  money.  In 
Soerabaya  the  land-tax  was  raised  80^  ;  the  natives 
did  not  want  to  "  lease  "  land  on  those  terms,  but  were 
forced  to  do  so  by  the  government. ^  Because  of  the 
sufferings  in  this  province  the  government  instituted  a 
commission  toward  the  end  of  1815  to  investigate  the 
workings  of  the  tax.  Such  confusion  existed  in  the  whole 
revenue  department  that  it  was  impossible  to  determine 
what  had  been  and  what  fairly  could  be  paid  by  villages, 
still  less  in  respect  to  individuals.  The  land-tax  was 
cut  down  an  even  20^  and  should  have  been  still 
further  reduced.  When  reductions  were  made,  however, 
as  in  Cheribon  and  Soerabaya,  they  benefited  mainly  the 
native  officials  and  usurers  ;  Raffles's  scheme  for  remission 
in  the  case  of  over-taxed  natives  could  not  be  practically 
administered,  and  the  poor  and  weak  continued  to  pay  the 
highest  taxes  as  under  the  old  native  organization.'* 

1  Report  of  De  Sails,  M.  L.  van  Deventer,  NG.,  91. 

2  Cheribon,  Report  by  Servatius,  S.  van  Deventer,  LS. ,  1 :  366  ff. 

*  Report  of  Van  Lawick  van  Pabst,  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  1  :  374. 

*  Elout  to  Director  General  of  Colonies,  May  30,  1816,  M.  L.  van  Deven- 
ter, NG.,68;  Report  of  Van  Lawick  van  Pabst,  supra;  Report  of  1881, 
S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  1  :  881. 


188  THE    DUTCH   IN   JAVA  chap. 

Before  proceeding  to  recount  the  fiscal  results  of  the 
land-tax  established  by  Raffles,  it  will  be  advisable  to 
consider  his  policy  in  regard  to  the  old  system  of  forced 
cultures.  While  he  agreed  with  Minto  in  condemning  the 
system,  his  practice  did  not  accord  exactly  with  his 
principles.  He  made  a  number  of  changes  looking  to  the 
abolition  of  contingents  ;  in  the  contracts  with  the  native 
princes  of  Djokjokarta  and  Soerakarta,  made  in  1811,  he 
freed  them  from  the  obligation  of  furnishing  wares  to  the 
government  as  they  had  been  used  to  do,  and  engaged  to 
pay  all  laborers  that  they  supplied. ^  He  wrote  in  the 
proclamation  of  1813,^  "The  system  of  vassalage  and 
forced  deliveries  has  been  abolished  generally  throughout 
the  island,"  but  in  the  same  paragraph  he  admitted  that 
some  parts  of  the  old  system  had  been  retained  provision- 
ally, and  in  fact  he  passed  these  on  to  the  Dutch  practically 
unchanged.  The  reason  for  his  course,  so  much  at  vari- 
ance with  his  published  ideas  and  with  the  heedless 
energy  with  which  he  pressed  the  introduction  of  the  land- 
tax,  was  undoubtedly  the  very  practical  consideration 
that  he  needed  money.  Until  the  land-tax  began  to  return 
the  larger  revenues  which  he  expected  from  it,  he  could 
not  safely  cut  loose  from  the  fiscal  devices  of  his  prede- 
cessors. 

The  moment  was  peculiarly  propitious,  however,  for  the 
abolition  of  the  forced  cultures,  and  Raffles  himself  gained 
little  froln  retaining  them.     The  most  important  culture, 


1  Contracts  in  M.  L.  van  Deventer,  NG.,  315,  319.  Compare  a  letter 
from  the  resident  of  Buitenzorg,  1812  (misdated  1882),  ih.,  332,  proposing 
an  increase  in  the  pay  of  laborers  required  to  come  from  a  distance  to 
work. 

2  Sub.,  174. 


V  PERIOD   OF   BRITISH   RULE  189 

that  of  coffee,  was  a  source  of  actual  loss  to  the  government 
in  the  early  period  of  his  administration  ;  lie  found  the 
government  storehouses  heaped  with  a  product  for  which 
he  could  find  no  market,  while  he  was  obliged  to  pay  the 
natives  something  for  whatever  additional  supplies  they 
furnished.  He  proposed  to  stop  these  payments  and  to 
allow  the  free  cultivation  and  export  of  coffee  and  other 
products  in  the  eastern  districts  of  the  island.^  The  lands 
formerly  devoted  to  the  culture  of  export  articles  like 
coffee  and  pepper  were  subjected  with  others  to  the  land- 
tax,  and  the  cultures  rapidly  declined. ^  In  the  Preanger 
regencies  of  western  Java,  however,  where  the  production 
of  coffee  had  been  most  successful  in  the  past,  the  culture 
was  retained,  and  these  districts  were  excepted  from  the 
operation  of  the  land-tax.^  Raffles  says  *  that  at  the  time 
when  the  island  was  restored  to  the  Dutch  he  was  making 
arrangements  to  free  the  coffee  cultures  also  in  the  Pre- 
anger districts,  but  if  he  had  plans  of  that  kind  they  were 
never  executed.  Another  exception  to  the  system  of  tax- 
ation was  made  in  the  so-called  hlandong  districts,  where 
the  people  were  required  to  cut  and  haul  teak-wood 
for  the  government.  There  was  considerable  vacillation  in 
the  policy  followed  in  these  districts,  and  different  methods 
of  exploiting  the  forests  were  tried,  but  in  general   the 

1  Minute  of  1813,  Sub.,  274  ;  1814,  ih.,  66.  Minute  of  September,  1813, 
M.  L.  van  Deventer,  NG.,  22. 

2  For  the  variety  of  ways  in  which  the  transition  to  the  tax  system  was 
effected  in  the  case  of  the  coffee  lands,  see  De  Salis  in  M.  L.  van  Deventer, 
NG.,  89.  The  idea  of  Raffles  that  the  coffee  production  in  the  East  would 
maintain  itself  without  compulsion  proved  an  illusion  ;  there  was  no  profit 
in  the  culture  at  the  time. 

3  Norman,  BH.,  242,  says  that  the  natives  in  these  districts  suffered 
more  under  Raffles's  rule  than  they  ever  suffered  before  or  since. 

*  Hist.,  1  :  144. 


190  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

system  of  forced  labor  was  retain ed.^  Raffles's  government 
seems  as  time  went  on  to  have  tended  constantly  to  take 
up  again  with  the  traditions  of  former  policy ;  it  became 
in  time  so  commercial  that  it  was  called  "warehouse 
keeper "  by  Crawford,^  and  it  made  the  reversion  to  the 
Company's  policy  much  more  easy  and  natural  in  the  time 
of  the  culture  system  by  preserving  the  most  important 
cultures  to  that  time. 

Until  near  the  close  of  Raffles's  administration  small 
revenue  was  received  from  the  coffee  culture,  because 
commerce  was  still  interrupted  by  the  wars  in  Europe  and 
America.  Raffles  wrote  in  1814  that  he  had  not  been  able 
to  dispose  of  a  single  cargo  during  the  year.^  Conditions 
improved  after  this  date,  and  if  the  figures  given  by  Raf- 
fles can  be  trusted,  there  was  a  pretty  active  commerce 
between  Java  and  the  outside  world  before  the  end  of  his 
administration.*  Before  Raffles  had  landed  in  'Java  he 
had  expressed  the  intention  of  restricting  the  enterprise 
of  Americans  and  other  "  commercial  interlopers "  and 
"  unprincipled  adventurers,"  ^  who  enjoyed  most  of  the 
trade,  and  used  it  to  sell  firearms  to  the  natives.  He  did 
not  revert  to  the  exclusive  policy  of  the  Company,  but  he 
established  a  system  which  was  not  "  free  trade,"  even  as 
that  phrase  was  understood  at  the  time.  Ships  that  did 
not  have  British  registry,  and  British  ships  coming  from 

1  M.  L.  van  Deventer,  NG.,  90  ;  Norman,  BH.,  161  ff.  Elout  said  that 
the  forestry  measures  of  the  British  oppressed  the  people,  wasted  the 
wood,  and  hurt  the  treasury,  ib.,  164. 

2  Deventer,  NG.,  cxvii.     See  this  for  further  illustration. 

8  Raffles  to  Governor  General,  British  India,  Oct.  6,  1814,  M.  L.  van 
Deventer,  NG.,  47. 

*  The  figures  given  by  Raffles,  Hist.,  1  :  215,  are  of  ships  and  tonnage 
and  do  not  show  the  amount  of  actual  trade,  as  is  pointed  out  in  Norman, 
BH.,282ff.  6  Mem.,  74. 


V  PERIOD   OF   BRITISH  RULE  191 

west  of  the  Cape,  could  trade  only  at  Batavia ;  the  cus- 
toms duties  were  comparatively  low,  ranging  from  about 
6  to  10  ^,  but  in  some  cases  a  preferential  duty  was 
imposed  to  favor  British  shipping.  ^  Raflles's  most  efficient 
work  in  respect  to  commerce  was  done  in  the  way  of  equal- 
izing duties  at  the  smaller  ports  and  in  reforming  the 
method  of  collection,  by  abolishing  the  system  of  farming 
out  the  duties  to  private  individuals. 

Raffles  had  very  sanguine  expectations  of  an  increase  in 
the  revenues  of  Java  by  the  introduction  of  the  land-tax  ; 
he  thought  that  in  some  districts  it  would  furnish  tenfold 
the  previous  receipts. ^  The  land-tax  did  in  fact  show 
a  steady  gain  in  the  first  few  years  after  its  introduction, 
rising  to  over  1,000,000  Java  rupees  in  1814  and  to  nearly 
2,500,000  in  1815.  It  formed  only  one  item,  however, 
though  the  most  important  one,  in  the  government  re- 
ceipts, which  were  got  from  a  great  variety  of  sources.^ 
Other  revenues  declined,  or  at  least  did  not  advance 
with  it,  and  though  the  total  receipts  of  the  gov- 
ernment were  larger  than  under  Daendels  or  his  prede- 
cessors, they  continued  less  than  the  expenditures,  and 
there   was   an   annual   deficit  of   several  million  rupees. 

1  Details  of  Raffles's  tariffs,  of  which  there  were  four,  are  given  in  Nor- 
man, BH.,  266  ff.,  in  tabulated  form.  By  the  tariff  of  1814  foreign  ships 
paid  15%  ad  valorem,  while  British  paid  \Q%  ;  and  there  was  a  tendency 
afterward  to  increase  the  preferential  in  various  ways.  M.  L.  van  Deven- 
ter,  NG. ,  cvii.  Just  before  the  island  was  restored  to  the  Dutch  the  Brit- 
ish lowered  the  duties  with  the  hope  of  gaining  by  it  afterward.  Norman, 
272, 

2  Min. ,  1813,  Sub.,  276.  He  asserted  that  this  increase  had  been  attained 
in  his  minute  of  1814  {ib.,  49),  but  the  figures  he  gives  there  do  not  ac- 
cord with  the  figures  of  actual  receipts  and  must  represent  only  estimates. 

3  See  the  table  in  Raffles,  Hist.,  1  :  opp.  342,  and  for  a  detailed  descrip- 
tion of  the  different  sources  of  revenue  M.  L.  van  Deventer,  NG.,  xcix  ff., 
119  ff.,  164  ff. 


192  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

Raffles  ascribed  his  recall,  which  took  place  shortly  before 
the  evacuation  of  Java  by  the  British,  to  the  opposition  in 
British  India  and  in  England  caused  by  his  demands  on 
the  Bengal  treasury.  ^  In  his  straits  for  funds  he  did  not 
resist  always  the  temptation  to  issue  paper  money.  His 
issues,  however,  were  in  the  form  of  bank-notes  and  treas- 
ury bills,  which  were  redeemed  for  the  most  part  before 
the  middle  of  1816,  and  he  drew  out  of  the  circulation 
over  $8,000,000  (Dutch),  in  nominal  value,  of  the  de- 
preciated paper  money  left  in  Java  by  his  predecessors. 
The  device  by  which  he  accomplished  this  result  is  one 
of  the  features  of  his  administration  that  has  been  most 
severely  criticised  ;  instead  of  taxing  the  money  out  of 
circulation,  he  sold  land,  as  Daendels  had  done  before  him, 
and  received  the  paper  in  payment.  A  land  sale  by  the 
government  is  not  so  innocent  in  Java  as  in  countries  of 
the  New  World,  for  it  implies  a  sale  of  labor  too  ;  the 
State  parted  with  a  share  of  its  rights  over  the  people  set- 
tled on  the  lands,  and  gave  to  the  purchaser  a  power  over 
them  that  has  proved  a  hindrance  to  good  government  up 
to  the  present  time.^ 

Leaving  now  the  topic  of  policy  for  that  of  administra- 
tion, there  are  to  be  considered  the  changes  attempted  and 
effected  by  Raffles  in  the  European  organization  in  Java 
and  in  the  government  of  the  natives.  "  It  would  be  end- 
less to  notice  the  difficulties  and  obstacles  which  occurred 

1  Raffles,  Mem.,  284. 

2  I  mean  only  to  suggest  some  of  the  striking  features  of  Raffles's  fiscal 
policy ;  for  the  details  the  reader  is  referred  to  Norman,  to  M.  L.  van 
Deventer,  NG.,  Introduction,  and  to  C.  E.  van  Kesteren,  "  Een  legaat  uit 
den  Engelschen  tijd,"  Ind.  Gids,  1884,  2  :  403  ff. ;  1886,  1 :  449  ff.,  where 
he  will  find  an  extended  discussion.  Raffles  recovered  for  the  govern- 
ment some  of  the  lands  previously  alienated,  but  was  charged  with  making 
an  improper  personal  gain  out  of  the  sales  which  he  instituted. 


V  PERIOD  OF  BRITISH  RULE  193 

in  the  establishment  of  a  pure  and  upright  administration. 
Not  only  was  the  whole  system  previously  pursued  by  the 
Dutch  to  be  subverted,  but  an  entire  new  one  substituted, 
as  pure  and  liberal  as  the  old  one  was  vicious  and  con- 
tracted ;  and  this  was  to  be  accomplished  and  carried  into 
effect  by  the  very  persons  who  had  so  long  fattened  on 
the  vice  of  the  former  policy."  ^  These  words  may  awaken 
surprise  in  view  of  the  reforms  that  have  been  described 
as  taking  place  under  Daendels,  and  they  may  be  taken, 
written  as  they  were  by  Mrs.  Raffles,  as  exaggerating 
considerably  the  evils  that  Raffles  had  to  meet.  There 
was  some  truth  in  them,  however;  it  is  a  characteristic 
difficulty  of  the  historian  of  the  colonial  administration  in 
Java  at  this  period  that  he  reads  of  reforms  as  being  pro- 
posed or  even  effected  under  one  Governor,  only  to  learn 
from  the  Governor's  successor  that  the  work  is  all  to  be 
done  over  again.  This  is  as  true  of  the  period  of  Raffles 
as  of  other  periods  ;  a  totally  different  impression  is  given 
by  reading  his  own  accounts  of  the  improvements  he  made 
and  then  reading  the  account  of  conditions  as  his  suc- 
cessors found  them.  Where  so  many  good  intentions 
were  lost  on  the  way  to  fulfilment,  it  would  be  fruitless 
for  the  purpose  of  this  book  to  notice  the  changes  in 
detail,  and  I  shall  attempt  no  more  than  a  review  of  the 
main  tendencies  of  Raffles's  administrative  work.  It  should 
be  noted  beforehand  that  in  spite  of  the  attempt  of  the 
preceding  Dutch  Governor  General  to  prevent  his  officials 
from  serving  under  the  English,^  they  formed  a  consider- 
able part  of  Rafffes's  administration,  and  seem  to  have  been 

1  Mem.,  100. 

2  He  made  them  swear  not  to  take  office.     Minto  to  East  India  Com- 
pany, Dec.  6,  1811,  M.  L.  van  Deventer,  NG.,  3. 

'    o 


194  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

at  least  as  faithful  and  efficient  as  the  officials  of  British 
origin.^ 

In  regard  to  the  provincial  administration,  Raffles's  main 
object  was  to  effect  a  better  government  of  the  mass  of  the 
people  by  strengthening  the  position  of  the  European 
officials.  He  nearly  doubled  the  number  of  residents,  to 
whom  now  first  the  name  becomes  permanently  attached ; 
he  revised  the  territorial  divisions  to  suit  the  change  in 
numbers,  and  provided  for  a  uniform  subdivision  of  each 
residency  into  districts  under  native  regents,  that  was  not 
completed  in  his  time  but  that  served  as  a  basis  for  organ- 
ization afterwards.  The  instructions  that  he  formulated 
for  the  residents  expressed  so  well  the  proper  character  of 
their  powers  and  duties  that  they  were  retained  entire  by 
the  Dutch  after  their  restoration.  An  attempt  was  made 
to  bring  the  resident  into  closer  touch  with  the  natives  by 
requiring  him  to  make  periodical  journeys  and  reports, 
and  by  giving  the  people  the  right  to  make  petitions  and 
complaints  to  him.  The  somewhat  elaborate  plans  of 
Raffles  for  an  extension  of  the  European  administration 
below  the  residents  failed  for  lack  of  funds ;  some  few 
collectors  were  appointed,  but  in  general  the  resident  con- 
tinued to  be  burdened  by  a  great  variety  of  functions, 
civil,  military,  judicial,  and  financial,  and  it  is  not  surpris- 
ing that  he  failed  to  execute  all  of  his  duties  satisfactorily. 
The  fiscal  administration  was  modified  by  the  British 
without  being  improved ;  the  Dutch  commissioners  found 
it  to  be  loose  and  ill  regulated  when  they  arrived. ^ 

1  M.  L.  van  Deventer,  NG. ,  xciii,  names  six  Dutch  officials  who  served 
under  Raffles.  I  have  referred  above  to  the  fact  that  two  of  the  three 
members  of  his  original  council  were  Dutch  ;  to  one  of  them,  Muutinghe, 
he  acknowledges  a  very  great  obligation. 

2  Letter  of  Elout,  June  21,  1816,  M.  L.  van  Deventer,  NG.,  78. 


V  PERIOD   OF   BRITISH   RULE  195 

The  judicial  reorganization  by  Raffles  is  estimated  by  a 
competent  critic  ^  to  have  been  one  of  the  best  and  most 
permanent  results  of  the  period  of  British  rule.  Raffles 
made  a  clean  sweep  of  the  previous  arrangements  for  the 
administration  of  justice  and  reestablished  them  with 
an  eye  both  to  the  general  principles  underlying  judicial 
efficiency,  and  to  the  local  needs  of  Europeans  and  natives 
in  various  districts.  He  found  that  no  distinction  was 
made  in  the  exercise  of  police  and  properly  judicial  func- 
tions, that  abuses  which  he  termed  scandalous  still  existed 
in  the  conduct  of  justice,  and  that  the  system  of  courts 
was  badly  arranged.  The  measures  which  he  took  were 
far  from  remedying  all  evils,  and  he  made  some  serious 
blunders,  as  in  the  attempt  to  introduce  the  British  jury 
system  into  native  Java.^  There  seems  no  question,  how- 
ever, that  he  rendered  the  administration  of  justice  for 
Europeans  more  efficient,  and  that  he  established  the  prin- 
ciples on  which  the  judicial  relations  with  the  natives  were 
afterward  developed.  He  showed  an  industry  in  collect- 
ing information  about  native  customs  that  was  entirely 
praiseworthy,  and  he  made  an  earnest  effort  to  enable  and 
encourage  the  natives  to  submit  their  cases  to  courts  under 
European  influence. 

The  reforms  which  Raffles  effected  in  the  organization 
of  the  European  officials  in  Java  were  in  kind  not  different 
from  those  which  Daendels  had  attempted  before  him  ; 
they  were  such  changes  as  would  suggest  themselves  nat- 
urally to  a  businesslike  man,  and  presented  no  particular 
difficulty  in  their  execution.    With  the  plans  of  Raffles  for 

1  M.  L.  van  Deventer,  NG.,  cxxx. 

2  See  Veth,  Java,  2  ;  321,  for  a  summarized  criticism  of  Raffles's  judi- 
cial changes, 


196  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

the  reorganization  of  native  government  the  case  was  dif- 
ferent. They  were  so  entirely  opposed  to  the  policy  fol- 
lowed by  Europeans  in  the  preceding  centuries  and  to  the 
conditions  of  the  native  organization  that  they  amounted 
to  a  revolution.  They  were  resisted  by  the  ignorance  or 
the  interests  not  of  a  few  scores  of  officials,  but  of  a  whole 
people.  In  the  few  years  of  the  British  rule  and  amid  all 
the  distractions  peculiar  to  the  period  they  had  no  chance 
of  fulfilment.  No  greater  contrast  can  be  imagined  than 
that  between  the  ideals  that  Raffles  published  of  the  proper 
government  of  the  natives  and  the  facts.  Raffles's  name 
lives  now  because  of  the  vigorous  attempt  that  he  made  to 
realize  his  ideals,  but  it  was  left  to  others  to  accomplish 
what  he  proposed,  and  the  beneficent  influence  of  his  plans 
has  been  felt  more  in  later  times  than  it  was  in  his  own. 

Raffles  reduced  the  position  of  the  princes  who  ruled  the 
fragments  of  the  former  state  of  Mataram,  leaving  to  them 
only  a  shadow  of  the  independence  that  they  had  formerly 
enjoyed.^  Difficulties  increased,  however,  in  geometrical 
progression  as  he  attempted  to  extend  his  influence  in  the 
native  organization,  and  the  test  of  his  power  came  when 
he  attempted  to  define  and  check  by  it  the  authority  of  the 
provincial  governors  or  regents  and  of  their  subordinates. 
The  Lieutenant  Governor  had  to  determine  first  how  far 
he  dared  to  go,  second  how  far  he  was  able  to  go,  in  limiting 
their  powers.  In  the  reports  of  Raffles,  and  of  his  superi- 
ors in  British  India  and  inferiors  in  Java,  there  is  apparent 
a  certain  timidity  in  interfering  with  the  officials  who  were 

iBy  the  contracts  of  1811  the  Sultan  agreed  that  the  British  resident 
should  act  as  his  prime  minister,  and  the  Soenan  engaged  not  to  appoint 
or  remove  his  minister  without  the  consent  of  the  British.  M.  L.  van 
Deveuter,  NG.,  316,  317. 


V  PERIOD   OF  BRITISH  RULE  197 

the  actual  rulers  of  the  natives,  and  who  might  organize 
silent  opposition  or  provoke  open  war  against  the  Euro- 
pean government  if  they  were  too  harshly  treated. ^  His 
idea  was  to  win  their  favor  by  promising  them  a  position 
that  was,  so  far  as  regarded  its  material  advantages,  supe- 
rior to  that  which  they  had  previously  enjoyed,  while  he 
meant  that  they  should  renounce  the  powers  and  privileges 
that  had  been  abused  to  oppress  the  natives.  They  were 
to  be  government  officials,  subject  to  instructions  in  which 
their  powers  and  duties  were  carefully  defined.^  They 
were  to  be  paid  regular  salaries,  instead  of  helping  them- 
selves as  they  chose  from  the  resources  of  the  people. 

Their  good  conduct  might  have  been  secured  in  this 
way,  if  it  had  not  been  necessary  from  fiscal  consider- 
ations to  limit  the  money  salar}^  to  the  proportions  of  a 
douceur^  and  to  retain  in  large  part  the  old  system  by 
which  the  native  officials  were  paid  in  land.  "  Generally 
speaking,"  said  Raffles,  in  his  minute  of  1813,  native 
officials  were  to  be  paid  from  the  government  treasury ; 
"  as  far  as  practicable"  the  system  of  payment  in  land  was 
to  be  abolished. 3  The  introduction  of  the  land-tax  did 
cause  for  a  moment  a  disturbance  in  the  relations  previ- 
ously existing  between  the  official  class  and  the  people  ; 

1  Cf.  Raffles,  Sub.,  263  ff.,  289  ;  M.  L.  van  Deventer,  NG.,  29. 

2  See  for  an  example  of  these  iustractions  "  Een  instructie  voor  een  in- 
landsch  hoofd  nit  den  Engelschen  tijd,"  Bijd.,  TLV.,  1861,  2:4:  134  ff. 
This  set  of  instructions,  given  by  the  resident  of  Rembang  to  the  pateh  or 
minister  of  a  district  in  which  there  was  no  regular  regent,  is  a  document 
of  about  four  pages.  It  describes  the  proper  relations  of  the  minister  to 
the  government,  in  the  collection  of  taxes,  etc.,  and  to  the  people,  in 
furthering  their  physical  and  moral  welfare.  The  minister  could  not  levy 
extra  taxes,  was  limited  in  the  amount  of  service  he  could  exact,  etc. 

3  Sub.,  264.  The  salaries  proposed  ranged  from  two  to  seven  thousand 
Spanish  dollars  a  year.     Min.  of  Sept.  17,  1813,  NG.,  22. 


198  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

lands  which  had  been  held  as  "  appanages  "  by  officials,  to 
use  the  Dutch-Indian  term,  were  treated  like  any  other 
lands  and  leased  to  the  occupants,  without  the  reservation 
of  any  rights  to  the  officials  who  had  lived  off  their 
returns.^  It  was  but  a  short  while,  however,  before  the 
native  officials  renewed  their  former  relations  with  the  cul- 
tivators, and  Raffles  was  forced  to  sanction  this  arrange- 
ment because  his  resources  were  not  sufficient  to  provide 
adequate  salaries. ^  As  long  as  the  former  relations  be- 
tween the  native  officials  and  the  people  existed,  it  was  idle 
to  hope  for  a  change  in  the  character  of  the  native  govern- 
ment. Raffles  issued  an  order  abolishing  forced  services, 
but  he  had  no  means  of  putting  it  in  execution,  and  if  he 
carried  out  his  design  of  imposing  a  house-tax  to  take  the 
place  of  forced  deliveries  and  services,  the  natives  were 
burdened  probably  more  heavily  than  before.  The  report 
of  1818  recognized  that  so  far  as  a  regent  was  supported 
by  grants  of  land  the  natives  on  the  land  regarded  the 
regent  as  their  lord,  whom  they  were  bound  to  serve 
according  to  the  ancient  customs  of  the  country.  The 
regent  made  a  masterful  use  of  his  power,  and  old  exac- 
tions continued  as  before.^ 


1  Examples  of  this  appear  in  the  "Eindresume,"  2:  152,  155.  The 
report  of  Vos  on  Pasoeroean,  1816  (M.  L.  van  Ueventer,  NG.,  108),  if  it 
can  be  accepted  as  accurate,  proves  that  for  a  time  the  land-tax  accom- 
plished what  was  expected  of  it ;  he  said  that  the  common  people  were 
contented,  while  the  nobles  who  had  been  used  to  live  by  the  sweat  of 
others  were  the  ones  who  made  the  loudest  complaints. 

2  In  his  letter  of  January,  1814,  Mem.,  223,  he  says  that  he  gave  the 
regent  the  choice  of  money  or  land,  or  both.  It  is  probable  that  the 
regents  kept  most  of  their  previous  sources  of  income,  and  enjoyed  a  cash 
salary  in  addition. 

3  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  1 :  ,383.  The  evidence  that  Egerton  cites  to 
show  that  forced  services  were  abolished  according  to  Raffles's  order  is 


PERIOD   OF  BRITISH   RULE  19d 


Muntinghe  had  asked  in  his  minute  of  1813,  discussing 
the  police  powers  left  to  the  native  chiefs,  "  who  is  to  con- 
trol this  power  of  police,  with  regard  to  feudal  services, 
and  other  exactions,  customary  and  usual  under  the  for- 
mer system  ?     Who  will  prevent  the  lower  class  of  Java- 
nese from  showing  to  their  regents  the  same  veneration, 
the  same  subjection,  and  from  bestowing  on   them   the 
same  services  and  contributions,  which  they  think  it  next 
to  a  religious  duty  to  offer  and  perform  ?  "     When  land 
was  leased  in  large  blocks,  it  was  inevitable  that  the  gov- 
ernment should  settle  it  on  the  native  officials  ;  so  at  the 
first  settlement  of  Soerabaya  the  lessees  were  head-men  of 
the  native  government,  who  had  formerly  held  villages  as 
their  means  of  support ;  they  were  greedy  to  lease  of  the 
government,   and   gained   by  the   transaction,  while   the 
natives  remained  in  their  old  condition.^     It  was  useless 
to  insert  in  the  contracts  of  settlement  such  provisions 
as  one  that  appears  in  the  settlement  of  Bantam,   "No 
taxes  or  services  of  any  kind  are  to  be  exacted  from  the 
inhabitants.  ",2 

Muntinghe  foretold  the  breakdown  of  Raffles's  system  of 
taxation  and  government,  though  he  believed  in  its  prin- 
ciples and  was  a  strong  supporter  of  them  in  the  follow- 
ing period.  He  foresaw,  too,  that  the  individual  settle- 
ment could  not  be  realized,  and  that  the  land  would  fall 
again  into  the  control  of  the  native  officials,  who  would 
have  at  their  command  the  labor  and  produce  "  as  under  a 
feudal  system."     The  land-tax  system  not  only  left  the 

insufficient,  and  his  statement  that  the  land-tax  system  abolished  all  the 
regents'  profits,  "licit  and  illicit,"  is  incorrect.  Egerton,  "Raffles,"  91- 
92.    Cf.  M.  L.  van  Deventer,  NG.,  xcvi  ff.,  xcix. 

1  Verslag,  Van  Lawick  van  Pabst,  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  1 :  373. 

2M.  L.  van  Deventer,  NG.,  17. 


200  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

regents  with  their  power  practically  unimpaired  ;  it  also 
continued  the  authority  of  the  village  heads,  who  had 
been  elected  or  appointed  in  the  previous  period,  and 
tended  to  strengthen  this  authority.  The  land-tax  seems 
to  have  been  the  chief  cause  of  the  introduction  of  the 
communal  land  tenure  in  the  villages,  with  all  its  oppor- 
tunities for  abuse  and  oppression.  A  report  written  a  few 
years  after  the  introduction  of  the  laud-tax  describes  tlie 
head-men  as  taking  every  advantage  of  the  ignorance  of 
the  villagers  in  collecting  the  tax ;  they  forced  some 
people  to  pay  the  tax  in  advance  that  they  might  have  the 
use  of  the  money,  others  to  pay  the  tax  twice  over,  and 
the  people  were  helpless  under  them.^  According  to  one 
official  the  obligation  to  pay  the  tax  in  money  put  the 
people  in  the  power  of  the  well-to-do  among  them,  who 
assumed  the  role  of  capitalists  and  plied  usury  without 
mercy.2 

Raifles  had  as  little  success  in  attacking  one  particular 

1  Report  of  1818,  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  1 :  382. 

■^  Report  of  Van  Lawick  van  Pabst,  Soerabaya,  ib.,  373,  "  the  common 
Javanese  simply  changed  his  master.  Formerly  he  did  service  for  the 
government  and  for  his  regent ;  now  he  was  under  obligation  to  do  service 
for  the  lessee  of  the  village  or  the  man  who  advanced  his  money.  So 
that  most  of  the  Chinese  and  principal  native  inhabitants  of  the  city  of 
Soerabaya  can  be  said  to  have  leased  the  land,  like  the  regent  and  the  few 
native  heads  who  were  employed,  whose  income  consisted  partially  of  lauds 
iustead  of  a  cash  salary,  and  who  did  as  they  pleased  with  the  lands  and  the 
people  attached  to  them."  While  Raffles  had  not  absolutely  required 
payment  in  cash,  he  had  strongly  urged  it  (cf.  Min.,  1814,  Sub.,  154,  Rev. 
Instructions,  ib.,  p.  200),  and  his  oflicials  tended  to  force  part  payment 
at  least  in  cash.  One  resident  stipulated  that  from  one-fourth  to  one-half 
of  the  tax  should  be  invariablj^  paid  in  money.  Jourdan,  Pasoeroean, 
Sub.,  140.  See  also  Rept.  of  1818,  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  1  :  382.  One 
resident  reported  that  though  he  had  not  foreseen  any  source  from  which 
money  could  be  obtained,  payments  were  for  the  most  part  made  in  it, 
and  not  in  kind.     M.  L.  van  Deventer,  NG.,  87. 


V  PERIOD   OF  BRITISH   RULE  201 

abuse  of  the  native  organization,  the  internal  transit 
duties,  as  in  attempting  its  general  reform.  The  larger 
native  states  in  Java  had  not  in  their  territorial  growth 
wiped  out  the  taxes  which  marked  the  frontiers  of  the 
smaller  units  from  which  they  were  formed ;  internal 
transit  duties  hindered  commerce  and  production  as  they 
did  in  Europe  to  recent  times.  "  The  taxes  on  the  inter- 
nal trade  extended  to  every  article  of  produce,  manufac- 
ture, or  consumption  passing  through  the  country;  they 
were  levied  by  corrupt  and  extortionate  agents,  and  in 
most  cases  were  farmed  out  to  Chinese.  A  different  mode 
of  taxation  existed  in  every  district,  and  to  have  at- 
tempted to  reduce  them  to  one  uniform  system  would 
have  been  as  impracticable  as  to  have  enforced  their  sub- 
sequent collection  with  any  degree  of  regularity  or  cor- 
rectness." ^  The  amount  of  the  internal  duties  on  the 
transport  of  wares  was  estimated  at  nearly  50^  of  their 
value  by  one  English  official  and  was  probably  much 
more.  To  them  were  added  the  market  dues,  which  were 
levied  on  the  wares  exposed  for  sale  in  every  petty  vil- 
lage ;  there  was  no  limit  to  them  except  that  set  by  ill- 
defined  custom  and  the  ability  of  the  trader  to  pay. 
Raffles  proclaimed  the  abolition  of  internal  duties,  and 
ordered  that  the  market  tolls  should  be  administered 
directly  by  the  government  instead  of  being  farmed  out 
to  Chinese,  but  his  regulations  had  little  practical  effect. 
Even  iti  his  own  time,  it  is  said,  new  toll-gates  were  estab- 
lished where  none  had  existed  before,^  and  the  old  ones 
persisted  with  all  of  their  abuses.^ 

1  Raffles,  Sub.,  135.  .  2  Elout,  "Bijdragen,"  1851,  p.  51. 

3  Cf.  M.  L.  van  Deventer,  NG.,  95,  for  the  existence  of  toll-gates  in 
Kadoe,  1816  ;  Ind.  Gids,  1892,  1  :  988  ff.,  an  original  document  describing 

3 


202  THE   DUTCH   IN  JAVA  chai-.  v 

The  statement  of  Merkus^  that  the  government  by 
Europeans,  not  only  of  Java  but  of  the  Javanese  as  well, 
really  dates  from  Raffles  is  inaccurate,  as  any  such  gen- 
eral statement  must  be.  No  single  man  can  make  over  a 
great  political  system  when  that  system  is  a  true  expres- 
sion of  the  society  on  which  it  rests.  Least  of  all  could 
Raffles  accomplish  this  under  the  many  difficulties  of  his 
short  rule.  It  is  praise  enough  for  him  that  he  attempted 
the  task  that  generations  had  to  do,  and  that  he  worked 
so  manfully  to  accomplish  it.  Neither  his  own  failure 
nor  that  of  his  Dutch  successors  to  realize  the  ideals  that 
he  proposed  condemns  his  plans.  Those  plans  were  sound 
and  practicable,  and  if  more  men  like  Raffles  had  followed 
him,  and  had  been  allowed  to  carry  on  the  work  unham- 
pered by  selfish  demands  from  Europe,  Java  would  now 
be  the  gainer  by  many  years  of  progress. 

the  abuses,  1817-1824;  and  P.  H.  van  der  Kemp,  "De  economische 
oorzaken  van  den  Java-oorlog,"  Bijd.  TLV.,  1897,  6:3:  42-48.  Among 
other  measures  taken  by  Raffles  for  the  good  of  the  people  ought  to  be 
mentioned  his  acts  limiting  the  slave  trade  and  looking  to  the  abolition  of 
slavery.  The  institution  of  slavery  was  not  sufficiently  important  in  Java 
to  v^arrant  a  detailed  discussion  of  these  acts  and  their  results  ;  for  them 
see  Norman,  BH.,  157  ff.,  M.  L.  van  De  venter,  NG.,  cxxxiv  ff. 
1  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  2  :  286. 


o 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE   PERIOD   OF  THE   DUTCH  RESTORATION 

rpiHE  British  rule  forms  a  great  dividing  line  in  the  his- 
-■-  tory  of  the  Dutch  in  Java.  Before  the  time  of  Raffles 
there  was  but  slight  departure  from  the  system  of  the 
East  India  Company.  This  system  was  not  entirely  abol- 
ished by  him,  and  enough  of  it  was  preserved  to  furnish 
a  basis  in  later  times  for  the  extension  of  the  culture  sys- 
tem, which  marked  a  reversion  to  its  principles.  The 
new  principles,  however,  which  had  been  formulated  by 
Dirk  van  Hogendorp  and  which  Raffles  had  attempted  to 
apply,  were  never  entirely  out  of  mind ;  they  revived  with 
the  growth  of  political  liberalism  in  Europe,  and  formed 
the  ideals  toward  which  the  Dutch  have  worked  in  the 
most  recent  period  of  their  rule.  At  the  time  of  the 
Dutch  restoration  in  1816  they  were  accepted  by  the  offi- 
cials who  were  sent  from  the  Netherlands  to  take  posses- 
sion of  the  island,  and  inspired  the  measures  which  these 
officials  took  in  reestablishing  Dutch  rule. 

The  colonial  constitution  of  1815,  framed  when  Java 
was  still  occupied  by  the  British,  determined  that  inhab- 
itants of  the  Dutch  East  Indies  should  be  allowed  the 
free  cultivation  of  all  products  except  spices  and  opium, 
and  saving  the  forced  deliveries  which  had  been  main- 
tained by  the  British,  and  which  were  to  be  subject  to 
future   regulation.      The   constitution   implied   that   the 

203 


204  THE   DUTCH   IN   JAVA  chap. 

main  obligation  of  the  natives  to  the  government  was  to 
be  a  land-tax,  and  that  when  they  had  paid  this  tax,  in 
money  or  in  kind,  they  were  to  have  free  disposal  of  the 
produce  of  their  lands. ^ 

The  persons  to  whom  the  general  execution  of  these 
principles  was  confided,  and  who  were  granted  great 
authority  in  determining  the  details,  were  three  commis- 
sioners, who  had  been  appointed  in  1814  to  receive  Java 
from  the  British,  and  who  arrived  in  the  island  and  began 
their  work  in  1816.  A  fourth  person,  who  nominally  did 
not  share  in  the  authority  of  the  commissioners,  but  who 
had  actually  great  influence  in  determining  their  policy, 
was  one  whose  name  has  been  mentioned  in  previous  chap- 
ters, H.  W.  Muntinghe.  His  services  had  been  mentioned 
with  grateful  appreciation  by  Daendels^  and  by  Raffles. ^ 
He  was  without  question  the  Dutch  official  who  was  most 
competent  to  direct  the  restored  government,  and  he  had 
at  first  been  named  as  one  of  the  commissioners,  but  later 
was  set  aside  to  make  place  for  a  nominee  from  the  Neth- 
erlands.* As  president  of  the  Council  of  Finance  Mun- 
tinghe occupied  a  subordinate  position,  but  his  practical 
experience  made  him  indispensable  to  the  commissioners, 
and  the  remarkable  report  which  he  submitted  to  them  in 
1817,  and  in  which  he  maintained  the  policy  that  Raffles 

1  Reg.,  1815,  art.  78-79,  Mijer,  Verz.,  392.  Proclamation  of  Director 
General  of  Colonies,  1815,  M.  L.  van  Deventer,  NG. ,  54. 

2  Daendels  to  Minister,  October,  1809,  Jonge,  Opk.,  13  :  430. 

8  Kaffles  said  that  he  owed  to  Muntinghe  the  most  valuable  assistance 
in  framing  his  government ;  that  Muntinghe  first  pointed  out  to  him  the 
abuses  in  the  former  system,  and  encouraged  him  to  reform  it.     Sub.,  78. 

*  Meinsma,  Gesch. ,  2  :  133.  Meinsma  thinks  that  this  change  was  made 
that  Muntinghe's  abilities  miglit  be  more  effectively  utilized,  and  that  there 
were  objections,  too,  to  promoting  an  official  already  in  Java  to  be  com- 
missioner. 


VI  THE   PERIOD   OF  THE  DUTCH   RESTORATION  206 

had  followed,  was  accepted  by  them  with  some  reserva- 
tions as  expressing  the  principles  they  were  to  follow.  ^ 

No  rulers  of  Java  before  or  since  have  been  faced  by 
the  peculiar  difficulties  which  confronted  the  Dutch  com- 
missioners of  1816.  They  fell  heirs  to  the  projects  of 
their  predecessor  for  a  complete  change  in  the  system  of 
government,  but  found  these  projects  only  half  carried  out 
and  confused  by  the  greatest  differences  in  their  practical 
execution.  Raffles  had  written  to  a  friend,  in  the  early 
period  of  his  rule,  "  unless  I  felt  satisfied  that  I  could 
fully  establish  the  new  system  before  I  attempted  its 
adoption,  I  might  by  a  partial  interference  hamper  and 
annoy  the  government  which  is  permanently  to  rule  over 
the  island."  ^  The  danger  of  a  mixture  of  systems,  old  and 
new,  had  been  foreseen  by  Muntinghe,  who  wrote  in  his 
minute  of  1813,^  "the  partial  grant  of  a  free  trade  and 
free  cultivation,  under  a  continuation  of  the  feudal  system 
in  general,  is  a  mock  privilege,  which  can  be  of  no  effect 
whatever  on  the  emancipation  of  the  people  at  large,  nor 
of  any  benefit  to  government,  beyond  what  a  system  of 
monopoly  will  afford.  It  must,  in  fact,  prove  a  continua- 
tion of  the  ancient  system ;  it  can  forbode  nothing  else 
but  a  repetition  of  the  same  losses  and  disappointments 
which  it  had  produced  before,  and  the  partial  liberation 
announced  by  it  to  the  inhabitants  of  Java  will  always 
remain  nominal." 

The  mixture  of  systems  which  both  Raffles  and  Mun- 

^  This  report,  which  is  printed  in  extenso  in  S.  van  Deventer,  LS., 
1 :  281-356,  and  from  which  I  have  made  already  a  number  of  quotations, 
is  held  by  Pierson,  KP.,  45,  to  express  with  sufficient  accuracy  the  con- 
siderations moulding  the  policy  of  the  commissioners. 

2  Raffles  to  Marsden,  January,  1813,  Mem.,  206. 

'Raffles,  Sub.,  287. 


206  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

tinghe  had  deprecated  had  come  to  pass ;  it  was  indeed 
inevitable  that  the  transition  from  one  system  to  another 
should  be  marked  by  the  existence  together  of  both  old 
and  new.  It  was  the  business  now  of  the  commissioners 
to  untangle  the  existing  confusion,  to  choose  the  better 
among  measures  that  might  all  seem  bad,  to  decide  upon 
the  practicable,  and  to  exercise  the  energy  at  their  dis- 
posal with  all  the  economy  that  the  conditions  made 
necessary.  They  found  their  administration  to  consist 
largely  of  Englishmen,  who  were  helpful  and  obliging, 
but  who  could  not  be  permanently  kept  in  service ;  they 
found  the  Dutch  officials  who  had  been  maintained  in 
office  by  the  British  to  be  prejudiced  against  changes 
which  had  thrust  them  into  the  background,  and  the  new 
officials  whom  they  appointed  were  raw  and  ignorant, 
unable  to  give  them  accurate  information  of  conditions  or 
to  help  them  in  reforms.^  Worst  of  all,  they  found  an 
empty  treasury  and  a  constant  deficit.  They  had  to  begin 
their  rule  by  drawing  on  the  Netherlands  to  make  the 
payments  to  the  British  which  the  transfer  of  the  island 
involved ;  they  had  to  borrow  at  9fo  and  were  not  then 
in  a  condition  to  pay  in  full  the  salaries  of  the  military 
and  civil  service. ^ 

The  most  important  point  of  policy  to  be  settled  by  the 
commissioners,  "  the  great  and  delicate  question,"  as 
Muntinghe  put  it,  was  the  attitude  that  they  should 
assume  to  the  land-tax  ;  the  decision  on  this  point  in- 
volved  the  choice  between  free  labor  or  forced  as  the 

1  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  1  :  259  ff.  The  praise  of  the  officials  expressed 
by  Elout  in  his  farewell  address,  "  Bijdragea,"  1861,  must  be  taken  with 
allowances  proper  to  the  occasion. 

2  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  268. 


VI  THE   PERIOD   OF   THE   DUTCH   RESTORATION  207 

base  of  their  system.  Enough  has  been  said  about  the 
practical  workings  of  Raffles's  tax  to  make  plain  to 
the  reader  that  the  commissioners  were  little  likely  to 
accept  it  without  hesitation  or  reservation.  It  was  not 
only  incomplete  in  its  principles  but  absolutely  wild  in  its 
workings.  Owing  to  the  insufficiency  of  the  European 
administration,  it  had  in  no  case  retained  the  character 
which  Raffles  had  designed  for  it ;  it  had  become  degraded 
by  being  moulded  to  fit  the  native  organization,  and 
showed  in  its  workings  all  of  the  abuses  of  the  former 
native  system. ^  The  tax  was  not  only  unjust  ;  it  was 
also  inefficient.  It  failed  to  meet  one  of  the  first  requi- 
sites of  a  good  tax,  namely  that  the  government  should  be 
able  to  estimate  its  yield  and  collect  the  estimated  sum  ; 
commissioners  found  that  the  returns  from  the  tax 
dribbled  into  the  treasury  far  in  arrears,  and  considerably 
below  the  amounts  that  had  been  expected.^ 

The  commissioners  confined  their  action  at  the  start  to 
the  endeavor  to  get  information  as  to  the  actual  workings 
of  the  tax  from  the  officials  in  the  field.  The  reports 
showed,  as  they  came  in,  the  greatest  diversity  of  opinion 
among  the  residents,  to  be  explained  in  part  by  their 
personal  prejudices,  but  in  greater  measure  by  the  fact 
that  the  tax  worked  in  the  same  way  in  no  two  districts. 
The  resident  of  one  district  thought  that  the  people  were 
not  ripe  for  a  tax  system  ;  he  asserted  that  the  hurried 
introduction  of  the  land-tax  had  resulted  in  a  decline  in 

1  For  evidence  of  the  clumsy  workings  of  the  land-tax,  in  addition  to 
that  already  quoted,  see  the  reports  of  1816  and  1817,  M.  L.  van  Deven- 
ter,  NG.,  86,  150  ff.  ;  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  1 :  376. 

2  See  the  figures  of  conditions  in  1816  from  the  report  of  1818,  S.  van 
Deventer,  LS.,  1  :  378.  Piersou,  KP.,  42,  says  that  the  arrears,  1815-1817, 
amounted  to  2,000,000  gulden. 


208  THE   DUTCH   IN  JAVA  chap. 

production  and  even  in  population. i  The  resident  of 
Tagal  thought  that  the  tax  was  harmful,  even  ruinous,  to 
the  natives,  and  would  be  destructive  in  its  influence  on 
the  government. 2  On  the  other  hand  one  resident  spoke 
of  the  "astonishing  speed  with  which  the  country  has 
advanced  in  cultivation  and  population  in  the  last  five 
years,"  as  a  result  of  a  new  system. ^  Conservative  officials 
recognized  the  faults  in  the  workings  of  the  tax  system, 
but  thought  that  these  could  be  remedied  in  the  course  of 
time  by  reforms  in  the  administration,  and  recommended 
that  the  tax  be  continued  in  the  hope  of  its  future 
development.* 

The  commissioners  inclined  to  this  last  view,  that  the 
land-tax  was  good  in  principle  but  subject  to  great  irregu- 
larity in  its  workings  ;  they  decided  in  the  latter  part  of 
1816  to  retain  it  without  change  for  the  time,  but  to 
attempt  to  improve  its  administration.^  Muntinghe's 
report  of  1817,  to  which  they  gave  in  general  their 
endorsement,  presented  a  thorough-going  platform  of 
liberal  principles  as  the  basis  of  their  policy.  The  gov- 
ernment was  to  depend  primarily  on  taxes,  especially  on 
the  land-tax,  which  was  to  be  maintained  and  improved  ; 
and  all  commercial  considerations  were  to  be  regarded  as 
of  secondary  importance.  The  natives  were  not  to  work 
except  voluntarily  and  for  full  paj^  and  that  they  might 

1  Report  of  De  Salis,  Pekalongan  and  Kedoe,  September,  1816,  M.  L 
van  Deventer,  NG.,  84. 

2  Report  of  January,  1817,  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  1 :  370. 

8  Report  of  Vos  on  Pasoeroean,  Sept.,  1816,  M.  L.  van  Deventer,  NG., 
105. 

*  Report  of  Servatius,  Cheribon,  March,  1817,  S.  van  Deventer,  LS., 
1  :  369  ;  Report  of  De  Bruijn,  Bantam,  1817,  M.  L.  van  Deventer,  NG.,  161. 

6  Van  der  Capellen  to  Director  General  of  Colonies,  Oct.  15,  1817, 
M.  L.  van  Deventer,  NG.,  204  ;  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  1  :  271. 


VI  THE   PERIOD   OF   THE   DUTCH   RESTORATION  209 

have  the  means  to  meet  their  taxes  they  were  to  be 
secured  against  interference  with  their  persons,  property, 
and  the  fruits  of  their  labor.  ^ 

The  commissioners  made  zealous  use  of  all  the  time 
they  spent  in  Java  to  put  the  land-tax  on  a  practical  and 
permanent  basis.  They  recognized  the  difficulty  of  their 
task  and  approached  it  with  a  becoming  modesty.  They 
collected  information  by  personal  investigations  and  by 
the  agency  of  their  subordinates,  they  deliberated  on  it 
carefully,  and  set  forth  their  results  in  laws  which  though 
admittedly  tentative  suited  so  well  the  conditions  that 
they  endured  for  generations.  Hearty  endorsement  can 
be  given  to  the  appreciation  by  a  modern  financier,  Mr. 
N.  G.  Pierson.2  "  I  believe  that  no  one  can  do  more  than 
cast  a  superficial  glance  at  the  legislative  work  of  the 
Commissioners  General,  without  conceiving  a  great  admi- 
ration for  the  men  who  accomplished  this  work.  It  gives 
evidence  of  knowledge  of  the  facts,  of  careful  deliberation, 
—  above  all  of  sagacity.  A  matured  plan  formed  the  basis 
of  the  whole  regulation,  and  where  means  were  lacking  to 
execute  this  plan  in  the  way  desired,  they  attempted  no 
impossibilities,  but  contented  themselves  with  provisional 
measures,  while  they  gave  the  necessary  instructions  to  make 
sure  that  proper  definitive  measures  could  be  taken  later." 

The  laws  of  1818  and  1819,  which  expressed  the  results 
of  the  commissioners'  deliberation  and  which  continued 
to  regulate  the  land-tax  system  down  to  1872  and  even 
after  that  date  in  fact,  introduced  the  following  important 
changes  into  the  system  as  it  had  been  left  by  Raffles. ^ 


1  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  1  :  335  ;  I  have  rearranged  and  condensed  the 
six  articles  in  which  Muntinghe  sels  fortli  iiio  principles.  "  KP.,  30. 

2 The  texts  of  these  laws  are  printed  in  S,  van  Deventer,  LS.,  356-360, 


210  THE   DUTCH   IN  JAVA  chap. 

First,  the  attempt  to  impose  the  tax  on  individual 
natives  was  to  be  abandoned,  and  thereafter  the  tax  was 
to  be  imposed  on  vilhige  groups.  In  a  sense  this  marks  a 
decline  from  the  ideals  of  Raffles,  who  had  been  led  to  the 
individual  settlement  because  of  his  conviction  that  so 
long  as  any  native  officials,  even  the  lowest,  the  village 
heads,  controlled  imposition  and  collection  of  taxes,  the 
peoj)le  were  bound  to  suffer  injury.  There  was  some 
truth  in  Raffles's  notion,  as  can  be  shown  by  abundant 
instances  of  injustice  and  oppression  in  the  Javanese 
villages  in  very  recent  times.  The  idea,  however,  that 
this  flaw  in  the  tax  system  would  be  sufficient  to  wreck 
the  workings  of  the  tax  and  force  the  government  to 
adopt  a  detailed  settlement,  though  it  was  clearly  pre- 
sented by  a  subordinate  official  at  the  time,  has  not  proved 
true.i  On  the  other  hand,  the  commissioners  were  moved 
by  a  consideration  that  in  their  position  was  of  the  greatest 
practical  importance,  the  fact  that  the  village  system 
lightened  immensely  the  labors  of  administration  for  the 
Europeans  by  throwing  some  of  them  on  the  shoulders  of 
natives.  It  was  simply  impossible  for  the  commissioners 
to  provide  the  number  of  officials  who  would  have  been 

400-407,  and  summarized  by  Pierson,  KP.,  43  ff.  ;  considerations  leading 
the  commissioners  to  these  changes  are  given  in  Elout,  "  Bijdragen,"  1851, 
31  ff. 

1  De  Bruijn  in  his  report  from  Bantam,  1817,  urged  the  detailed  settle- 
ment because  of  the  chances  for  abuse  in  any  other.  "  It  would  be  pos- 
sible, perhaps,  in  case  land  is  leased  to  desa  heads,  to  collect  considerable 
sums,  with  little  trouble  and  expense,  for  a  time  ;  but  this  advantage  can- 
not possibly  be  permanent,  for  it  would  be  opposed  to  the  common  inter- 
est, and  would  diy  up  the  springs  from  which  lasting  benefit  to  the  country 
must  flow,  while  at  the  same  time  this  system  would  conflict  with  the  ex- 
pressed sentiments  of  the  government,  that  the  immediate  advantage  of 
the  public  treasury  does  not  give  the  only  criterion  for  the  suitability 
(doelmatigheid)  of  a  tax."     M.  L.  van  Deventer,  NG.,  160. 


VI  THE  PERIOD   OF  THE   DUTCH  RESTORATION  211 

necessary  to  realize  the  individual  assessment  and  collec- 
tion of  the  tax  ;  substitute,  however,  a  village  group  for 
the  separate  individuals  as  the  tax-paying  subject,  and  the 
difficulties  were  lightened  many  fold.  It  might  seem  a 
pity  to  sacrifice  the  natives  to  the  tyranny  of  village  mis- 
government,  but  conditions  would  at  least  be  better  than 
in  the  old  times  when  regents  and  their  subordinates  had 
too  their  share  in  all  extortion,  and  the  commissioners 
clearly  regarded  the  system  of  village  imposition  as  but 
temporary  and  destined  to  give  place  to  the  taxation  of 
individuals  in  time.^ 

A  second  important  change  in  the  land-tax,  closely  con- 
nected with  this  first,  was  the  abandonment  of  any  fixed 
principle  of  assessing  the  tax,  and  the  regulation  that  the 
amount  to  be  paid  by  each  village  should  be  reached  by 
agreement  with  the  village  government,  —  that  is,  by  hig- 
gling. Raffles's  attempt  to  base  his  tax  on  the  general 
principle  that  land  of  a  certain  quality  should  pay  a  cer- 
tain proportion  of  its  yield  to  the  government  had  proved 
entirely  impracticable,  and  like  all  such  laws,  that  make  a 
show  of  justice  without  hope  of  securing  its  substance,  had 
stimulated  rather  than  checked  abuses.  The  amendment 
prescribed  certain  considerations  which  officials  should 
take  into  account  in  making  the  bargain  with  the  village 
government  for  the  taxes  of  the  year  :  the  amount  paid 
in  former  years,  the  condition  of  the  crops  at  the  time  of 
the  bargain,  and  circumstances  peculiar  to  any  village  that 
would  affect  its  tax-paying  power.  The  commissioners 
gave  up  all  attempts  at  precision  by  this  method  which 

1  Paragraph  1  of  the  law  said  that  the  village  system  should  con- 
tinue "  just  as  long  as  the  fields  shall  fail  to  be  properly  surveyed,  classi- 
fied, and  valued."     S.  van  De venter,  LS.,  1  :  401. 


212  THE   DUTCH   IN  JAVA  chap. 

they  adopted  for  the  raising  of  the  land-tax,  but  they 
created  a  system  so  pliant  that  it  preserved  the  natives 
from  extinction  if  not  from  injustice,  while  its  practicabil- 
ity from  the  government  standpoint  can  be  measured  by 
the  steady  increase  in  the  returns.  Finally,  the  commis- 
sioners gave  permission  to  the  natives  to  pay  the  tax  either 
in  money  or  in  kind  as  they  preferred,  and  so  guarded 
against  any  danger  that  may  have  existed  of  sacrificing 
the' people  to  native  usurers  by  requiring  cash  payments. ^ 
The  commissioners  had  received  no  instructions  to  do 
away  with  the  forced  cultures,  which  had  been  maintained 
by  Raffles,  and  showed  a  natural  reluctance,  while  the  sys- 
tem of  the  land-tax  was  still  in  the  experimental  stage,  to 
give  up  a  source  of  revenue  that  had  become  of  impor- 
tance with  the  opening  of  trade. ^  In  their  report  of  1818 
they  opposed  the  idea  that  all  of  Java  ought  properly 
to  ,be  subjected  to  the  same  system,  and  withheld  their 
opinion  on  the  advisability  of  retaining  the  forced  coffee 
culture  in  the  Preanger  regencies  until  they  should 
have  more  full  information  on  the  working  of  the  land- 
tax.^  Pierson  charges  the  commissioners  with  inconsist- 
ency, and  exposes  the  fallacy  of  the  arguments  by  which 
they  sought  to  justify  their  action,  but  his  criticism  seems 
too  unsparing  in  view  of  the  difficulties  under  which  the 
commissioners  labored.  It  is  not  fair  to  say,  as  he  does, 
that  the  system  of  cultures  was  either  good  or  bad,  entirely 
to  be  accepted  or  condemned.  Everything  Avas  more  or 
less   bad,  from  a  European  standpoint,  in  Java  at  this 

1  After  1827  part  of  the  tax  had  to  be  paid  in  money. 

2  Coffee  had  never  brought  such  high  prices  as  it  brought  in  the  time  of 
the  commissioners.  A  picol  sold  at  the  end  of  the  British  period  for 
$7.50,  in  1818  for  $17  to  $20.     M.  L.  van  Deventer,  NG.,  clxii. 

8  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  1  :  393.  *  KP.,  40 ff. 


VI  THE   PERIOD   OF  THE    DUTCH   RESTORATION  213 

time.  The  system  of  forced  cultures  had  certain  features 
that  rendered  it  particularly  liable  to  abuse  ;  it  is  hard  in 
judging  the  action  of  the  commissioners  at  this  time  to 
keep  from  mind  the  great  evils  of  the  culture  system  as  it 
was  extended  in  later  times,  and  to  forget  the  influence  that 
the  maintenance  of  the  coffee  culture  had  on  this  exten- 
sion. In  the  time  of  the  commissioners,  however,  another 
great  part  of  the  government's  revenue  system,  the  land- 
tax,  had  been  singled  out  for  reform ;  they  could  no't  do 
everything  at  once,  and  are  scarcely  to  be  blamed  for 
devoting  their  energies  pretty  exclusively  to  this  object 
and  deferring  other  reforms  until  this  had  been  accom- 
plished. The  commissioners  stood  squarely  on  the  ground 
that  the  home  country  had  full  right  to  all  returns  that 
could  be  got  from  the  natives  without  infringing  their 
claims  to  liberty  and  protection.  "  Even  magnanimity 
has  its  limits."^  At  the  time,  moreover,  the  coffee  culture, 
confined  to  the  parts  of  Java  most  suited  to  its  application, 
seems  to  have  exercised  comparatively  little  oppression. ^ 
The  commissioners  retained  the  forced  coffee  culture  in 
the  Preangers,  therefore,  though  they  freed  the  people 
from  some  of  the  burden  of  taxation  imposed  by  Raffles.^ 

1  Commissioner  General  to  Dii-ector  General,  Dec.  23,  1817,  M.  L.  van 
Deventer,  NG.,228. 

2  Plccardt,  CS.,  55,  says  that  there  is  a  world-wide  difference  of  opinion 
as  to  the  influence  of  the  forced  coffee  culture  on  the  Preangers.  Some 
think  that  it  exercised  little  pressure  ;  others  describe  the  population  as 
impoverished ;  he  finds  it  impossible  to  form  an  opinion  in  the  matter. 
There  were  native  demonstrations  against  oppression,  1817-1819,  but  they 
seem  to  have  been  caused  by  the  failure  of  the  British  to  reform  certain 
general  abuses  in  forced  services  to  which  the  native  government  lent 
itself,  and  show  no  connection  with  the  coffee  culture.  Cf.  M.  L.  van 
Deventer,  NG.,  clxvi  ff.,  180,  183. 

8  They  even  introduced  the  coffee  culture  into  a  district  at  the  eastern 
end  of  the  island  where  it  had  not  been  established  before,  but  Deventer 


214  THE   DUTCH   IN  JAVA  chap. 

They  retained  also  the  system  of  forced  services  in  the 
forests,  with  some  new  regulations  designed  to  prevent 
abuses.  1 

The  commissioners  had  not  only  to  come  to  a  decision 
on  the  status  of  the  forced  coffee  culture  where  it  had 
been  retained  by  the  British,  but  also  to  review  and  revise 
the  regulations  that  the  British  had  adoj)ted  for  the  coffee 
culture  in  other  parts  of  the  island.  Four  possible  plans 
of  action  were  suggested  to  them  in  the  report  on  the  sub- 
ject from  the  Council  of  Finance. ^  First,  the  government 
might  force  the  natives  to  cultivate  the  coffee  and  deliver 
the  product  for  very  low  prices,  as  had  been  done  under  the 
East  India  Company  and  as  was  to  be  done  later  under 
the  culture  system ;  second,  the  government  might  require 
forced  culture  and  delivery  but  pay  the  natives  by  wages 
instead  of  measuring  their  reward  by  the  amount  of  the 
product ;  third,  it  might  give  up  the  attempt  to  force  or 
pay  the  labor  on  the  coffee  plantations,  but  offer  a  fair 
price  for  the  product  and  require  that  it  should  be  sold  to 
no  one  else ;  finally,  it  might  put  the  lands  in  the  hands 
of  the  natives  subject  only  to  certain  special  regulations 
about  the  planting  of  trees  that  would  insure  the  main- 
tenance of  the  culture,  and  grant  the  natives  free  disposal 
of  the  product  of  their  lands  when  they  had  paid  a  fair 
tax  on  them.    The  last  of  these  plans,  and  the  most  liberal 

thinks  this  may  have  been  done  on  political  considerations;  NG.,  cliv. 
Veth  suggests  other  reasons  ;  Java,  2  :  340. 

1  The  failure  to  remove  oppressions  is  shovpn  by  the  fact  that  in  1821 
half  a  thousand  inhabitants  of  the  villages  subject  to  the  blandong  system 
came  to  Samarang,  asking  for  relief  ;  the  government  found  it  impossible 
to  disperse  them  by  punishment  of  the  ringleaders,  and  had  to  concede 
v.hat  they  asked.     Baud,  Pro  Mem.,  1829,  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  2  :  191. 

2  M.  L.  van  Deventer,  NG.,  189  ff.,  cli  it. 


vx  THE   PERIOD   OF   THE   LtUTCH   RESTORATION  215 

of  all  of  tliera,  was  the  one  adopted  by  the  commissioners. 
By  a  law  of  1817  the  government  leased  the  coffee  plan- 
tations to  the  village  governments  for  a  term  of  six  years, 
on  condition  that  each  year  new  plantations  equal  in 
extent  to  one-fifth  of  the  old  were  to  be  laid  out.  The 
natives  were  to  pay  a  tax  or  rent,  varying  from  one-third 
to  one-half  of  the  product,  according  to  the  goodness  of 
the  plantation ;  they  could  then  dispose  of  the  surplus  if 
they  pleased  ;  the  government  stood  ready  to  take  it  at  a 
certain  price  if  they  chose  to  sell.  Any  one  who  chose  to 
lay  out  a  new  plantation  could  pursue  the  coffee  culture 
on  payment  of  a  tax  of  two-fifths  of  the  crop.  If  the 
natives  refused  to  take  the  coffee  plantations  on  these 
terms,  the  government  proposed  to  cultivate  thera  on  its 
own  account  by  wage  labor.^ 

In  the  organization  of  the  European  administration  the 
commissioners  adhered  in  most  points  to  the  arrangements 
that  they  found  existing  after  Raffles's  reforms.  Some  of 
his  changes  were  revoked,^  but  the  commissioners  applied 
their  energies  in  general  to  extending  the  administration 
and  to  realizing  the  designs  that  Raffles  had  held  by  an 
increase  in  the  number  of  officials.  In  contrast  to  the 
rigid  economy  that  had  been  practised  under  the  British 
rule,  officials  were  multiplied,  not  always  apparently  with 
a  corresponding  increase  in  efficienc3^^     The  attention  of 

1  I  follow  the  summary  of  the  law  in  Pierson,  KP. ,  39 ;  S.  van  Deven- 
ter,  LS.,  1  :  274  fl,  prmts  only  extracts. 

^  So,  for  instance,  the  attempt  to  introduce  the  jury  and  several  other 
changes  of  a  judicial  character ;  Veth,  Java,  2  :  338  ;  Elout,  Bijdragen 
(1851),  21  ff. 

^  Cf.  the  description  and  criticism  of  tlie  administrative  changes  in  M. 
L.  van  Deventer,  NG.,  cxl  ff.  A  few  years  afterward  it  was  declared  that 
3,000,000  gulden  a  year  could  be  saved  on  the  expenditures  on  war  and 
public  works,  and  that  the  same  applied  to  the  civil  service,  ib.,  cxliii. 


216  THE   DUTCH   IN   JAVA  chap. 

the  commissioners  was  naturally  directed  to  the  strength- 
ening of  the  administration  of  the  land-tax,  which  had 
been  much  undermanned  in  the  British  period ;  they  ap- 
pointed new  officials  and  redistributed  their  duties. ^ 

They  began  too  the  agitation  for  an  improvement  in  the 
quality  of  the  officials  sent  out  from  the  Netherlands  for 
Indian  service,  whom  they  declared  to  be  in  many  cases 
entirely  unfit  for  their  work.^  The  need  not  only  of  good 
character  and  abilities,  but  also  of  special  training,  in  the 
case  of  members  of  the  Indian  civil  service,  became  more 
and  more  apparent  as  the  government  extended  its  work 
of  reform,  and  gained  a  better  appreciation  of  the  diffi- 
culties and  the  way  in  which  they  must  be  met.  "Knowl- 
edge of  native  languages,  knowledge  of  native  customs 
and  institutions,  and  the  appreciation  of  the  character  and 
valuable  qualities  of  the  native  population,"  wrote  Mun- 
tinghe,  "  we  think  we  may  submit  to  your  Excellencies  as 
indispensable  requisites  in  all  officials  who  are  in  the  future 
to  be  charged  with  the  collection  of  the  land-tax.     And 


1  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  1  :  391,  396  ff. 

2  The  Director  General  of  the  colonies  wrote  in  1816  that  there  was  a 
great  desire  to  go  out  to  India,  and  there  was  pressure  to  secure  places  ; 
M.  L.  van  Deventer,  NG.,  130  ;  at  the  same  time  the  commissioners  were 
complaining  of  the  quality  of  the  men  sent  them  for  the  civil  service  and 
asking  that  at  least  these  might  be  fit  to  learn,  S.  van  Deventer,  LS., 
1  :  262.  One  of  the  commissioners  wrote  to  the  Director  of  Colonies  in 
the  summer  of  1817  that  improvement  was  impossible  as  long  as  India 
was  regarded  as  a  dumping  ground  for  men  of  whom  the  Netherlands 
wanted  to  be  rid,  drunkards  and  the  like,  as  was  then  the  case  ;  M.  L. 
van  Deventer,  NG.,  cxliv,  185.  Van  Alphen  thinks  there  is  evidence  of 
corruption  among  the  Dutch  officials  in  the  time  of  the  commissioners,  by 
which  they  grew  rich  at  the  expense  of  the  natives.  "Onze  kennis  van 
Indie,"  De  Gids,  1867,  1  :  517.  Elout,  in  his  report  of  1819,  Bijdragen 
(1851),  71,  mentions  abuses  by  officials  which  Daeudels  had  tried  to 
extirpate  but  which  still  lingered  on. 


VI  THE   PERIOD   OF  THE   DUTCH   RESTORATION  217 

we  are  of  the  opinion  that  on  the  fitness  of  these  officials 
the  good  and  regular  working  of  a  system  of  taxation 
must  in  large  part  depend."  ^  A  beginning  was  made  in 
this  period  with  the  establishment  of  institutions  designed 
to  help  officials  to  gain  the  knowledge  desired  of  them. 
A  military  school  was  established  at  Samarang  in  1818,  at 
which  young  men  were  to  be  trained  for  service  in  the 
army,  navy,  and  engineering  corps,  and  provision  was  made 
by  which  the  school  should  receive  six  pupils  from  outside 
for  instruction  in  the  Javanese  tongue.^  Arrangements 
were  made  the  next  year  to  place  young  men  with  the 
residents  in  different  parts  of  the  East  Indies  to  learn 
languages  and  institutions  by  intercourse  with  members 
of  the  native  nobility,  and  at  the  same  time  subordinate 
members  of  the  Dutch  provincial  administration  were 
notified  that  they  must  acquire  such  a  knowledge  of  the 
language  of  the  district  as  to  be  able  to  use  it  readily,  on 
penalty  of  a  diminution  in  their  pay.^ 

The  provincial  administrative  organization  was  main- 
tained as  established  by  Raffles,  but  with  the  changes  that 
experience  proved  necessary  to  remedy  some  of  its  weaker 
spots.  The  resident  of  Soerabaya  reported^  that  murder, 
robbery,  and  arson  increased  constantly  in  the  island  of 
Madoera,  which  nominally  was  included  in  the  territory 
subject  to  him,  but  which  really  was  abandoned  to  its 
native  government ;  the  commissioners  made  of  the  island 
a  separate  residency.  Conditions  were  as  bad  in  Bantam, 
at  the  other  extremity  of  Java,  and  the  country  was  res- 
cued from  anarchy  in  1819  by  a  reorganization  attended 

1  Report  of  1817,  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  1  :  338,  273. 

*  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  2  :  41.     This  school  was  given  up  in  1826. 

» Ibid.,  42.  *  November,  1817,  M.  L.  van  Deventer,  NG.,  208. 


218  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

by  a  considerable  increase  in  the  number  of  European  and 
native  officials. ^  Complaints  from  other  parts  of  the 
island  were  met  by  the  increase  of  officials  and  the  dis- 
missal of  the  untrustworthy. 2 

A  noteworthy  feature  of  the  period  under  discussion  is 
the  change  in  attitude  of  the  government  toward  the 
native  officials.  One  of  the  residents  wrote  in  1823^  that 
many  European  officials  after  the  introduction  of  the  land- 
tax  thought  that  it  was  for  the  common  good  that  the 
native  officials  should  decrease  in  number,  and  finally  be 
done  away  with  altogether ;  experience,  however,  had 
brought  the  conviction  that  they  were  indispensable,  that 
the  Europeans  could  not  reach  the  native  communities 
without  them.  Some  of  the  residents  obstinately  attempted 
to  do  without  the  services  of  the  regents,  but  the  govern- 
ment had  come  to  appreciate  their  necessity,  and  did  what 
it  could  to  secure  their  good  services.  To  define  accu- 
rately their  position,  without  giving  them  too  much  or  too 
little  power,  was  a  delicate  matter,  but  they  must  at  least 
be  protected  against  humiliation  by  the  resident  and  be 
assured  some  sphere  of  action.*  By  a  law  of  1820,  passed 
after  the  departure  of  the  commissioners  but  apparently 
in  the  spirit  of  their  instructions,  the  rights  and  duties  of 
the  native  regents  were  established.    Any  attempt  to  sum- 

1  Report  of  Tobias,  1819,  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  2  :  30.  As  an  example 
of  the  condition  of  Bantam  about  the  time  of  British  rule  the  resident 
cited  the  case  of  an  Oriental  adventurer  who  raised  his  flag,  levied  taxes, 
and  acted  the  part  of  ruler  not  four  miles  away  from  the  Sultan's  residence, 
ib,,  26,  note. 

2  Report,  1818,  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  1 :  391 ;  two  regents  and  one 
district  head  had  been  dismissed.  For  the  increase  in  numbers  see  ib. , 
2  :  72  ff.,  passim. 

8  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  2  :  73. 

*  Letter  of  Van  der  Capellen,  1820,  S.  van  Deventer,  2  :  55  ff. 


VI  THE   PERIOD   OF   THE    DUTCH   RESTORATION  219 

marize  the  forty-six  articles  of  the  law  would  lead  to  too 
great  detail,  but  the  spirit  of  the  measure  can  be  rendered 
by  quoting  one  paragraph :  "  In  matters  concerning  the 
government  of  the  natives  the  regents  are  the  confidential 
advisers  of  the  resident,  and  he  shall  treat  them  as  his 
younger  brothers."  1 

The  tendency  in  this  as  in  most  of  the  other  regulations 
of  the  commissioners  was  to  depart  from  the  somewhat 
abstract  ideas  of  Raffles  in  favor  of  practical  efficiency. 
By  renouncing  the  fiction  that  Europeans  were  ready  to 
assume  entire  charge  of  affairs,  they  could  use  and  check 
the  power  of  native  officials  as  else  they  would  have  been 
unable  to  do.  There  was  frequently  occasion  afterward 
to  remind  the  residents  of  this  regulation  ;  2  in  spite,  how- 
ever, of  many  infractions,  it  was  observed  sufficiently  to 
bring  a  new  spirit  of  cooperation  into  the  administration 
and  to  increase  the  power  of  the  government. ^ 

It  is  impossible  to  blink  the  danger  tliat  came  from  the 
official  recognition  of  the  regents'  powers ;  the  abuses  of 
the  culture  system  follow  so  closely,  and  are  so  clearly 
related  to  this  partial  abdication  by  European  officials  that 
it  is  hard  to  judge  the  action  of  the  commissioners  fairly. 
I  am  inclined  to  think,  however,  that  the  abuses  resulted 
in  the  change  in  spirit  of  the  government  after  1830,  and 
were  no  necessary  result  of  the  commissioners'  action. 
The  previous  tendency  of  residents  to  snub  the  regents 
and  attempt  to  set  them  on  one  side  may  have  had  better 

1  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  2  :  61.  2  /jj^^.,  LS.,  2  :  67  ff.,  78. 

3  Chailley-Bert,  JH.,  236,  quotes  Baud  for  the  opinion  that  this  meas- 
ure secured  the  support  of  the  regents  during  the  Java  war.  The  new 
ambitions  inspired  in  native  officials  by  the  government's  policy  can  be 
seen  in  the  competition  for  titles  and  honorary  distinctions  that  increased 
from  this  time  on.     Cf.  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  2 :  70. 


220  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

motives  than  jealousy  or  ignorance,  but  I  bold  it  to  have 
been  unfortunate  because  impracticable. 

Below  the  rank  of  regent  came  the  head-men  of  the 
districts  into  which  the  regency  was  divided,  who  received 
orders  both  from  the  regent  and  the  resident,  and  were 
intrusted  mainly  with  police  duties,  the  settling  of  petty 
disputes,  and  the  gathering  of  information  for  their  supe- 
riors.^ Last  in  the  hierarchy  of  officials  were  the  village 
heads,  who  formed  the  link  uniting  the  common  people 
with  the  government  above ;  they  reported  on  the  condi- 
tion of  the  villages,  were  responsible  for  the  maintenance 
of  order  among  the  common  people,  and  carried  into  final 
execution  the  commands  of  the  superior  officials. ^  While 
the  commissioners  and  their  successors  increased  the 
number  of  intermediate  officials,  there  was  no  occasion 
for  them  to  attempt  an  increase  in  the  number  of  village 
heads,  who  were  found  in  one  form  or  another  in  nearly 
every  village  group.  A  law  of  1819  attempted  to  assure 
that  they  should  be  elected  freely  by  the  villagers,  subject 
to  the  approval  of  the  Dutch  resident. ^ 

Equal  in  interest  if  not  in  practical  importance  to  the 
extension  and  regulation  of  the  native  officials  were  cer- 
tain measures  aimed  at  particular  abuses  in  tlie  existing 
organization.*  The  most  important  of  these  concerned 
the  way  in  which  the  native  officials  were  paid  for  their 
services.  The  attempt  of  Raffles  to  introduce  money 
salaries   and  its  failure  have  been  noted  already.      The 

1  For  the  position  of  the  demang,  oxioedono,  and  his  assistants,  mantrVs, 
see  Kleyn,  Gew.  Best.,  89  ff.,  which  gives  a  summary  of  the  law  of  1819. 

2  Kleyn,  93  fe. 

8  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  1  :  414. 

*  I  should,  however,  note  that  the  two  protected  principalities  and  the 
Preanger  regencies  were  excepted  from  all  these  changes. 


VI  THE   PERIOD   OF   THE   DUTCH   RESTORATION  221 

evils  of  the  native  system  of  payment  by  land  grants  were 
called  to  the  attention  of  the  commissioners  and  were 
recognized  by  them.^  By  a  law  of  1818  they  attempted 
to  restrict  the  dues  that  an  official  could  take  from  his 
land  to  an  amount  equal  to  the  government  land-tax,  and 
in  1819  they  altogether  abolished  payment  by  the  grant 
of  land.2  Another  part  of  this  same  law  prohibited  the 
native  officials  of  higher  rank  from  engaging  in  commer- 
cial transactions,  on  penalty  of  losing  their  positions  ;  this 
would  remedy  the  evils  of  official  usury,  so  far  as  positive 
law  could  accomplish  anj^thing  without  the  economic  in- 
fluence of  European  merchants.  Finally,  another  law  of 
1819  provided  against  the  abuse  of  the  common  people 
through  the  connivance  or  intimidation  of  their  village 
governments,  by  taking  away  from  the  villages  the  right 
to  contract  as  corporations,  and  by  requiring  every  con- 
tract to  be  made  with  individuals  and  to  be  registered 
with  the  residents  if  it  were  to  be  binding.^ 

I  spoke  above  of  these  three  reform  measures  as  being 
interesting  rather  than  important.  They  show  that  the 
commissioners  had  an  understanding  of  some  of  the  worst 
abuses  to  which  the  people  under  their  charge  were  sub- 

1  The  resident  of  Rembang  proposed,  1817,  that  the  pay  of  the  native 
oflScials  should  be  entirely  in  money  and  should  be  increased.  S.  van 
Deventer,  LS.,  1  :  277.  The  commissioners,  in  their  report  of  1818,  ad- 
mitted that  the  people  of  eastern  Java  suffered  as  much  as  ever  under 
the  burden  of  forced  services.  "The  grant  of  land  necessarily  implies 
the  grant  of  people,  according  to  the  ideas  of  the  Javanese,  always  of  ser- 
vices, to  be  rendered  by  the  people  who  inhabit  the  land  to  the  usufructuary 
of  it;"  ib.,  1:383. 

2  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  1  :  412-413.  The  cash  salaries  of  regents  as 
established  in  1820  varied  in  different  parts  of  the  island;  most  were 
between  10,000  and  20,000  gulden  a  year  ;  ih.,  2 :  60,  note. 

3  S.  van  Deventer,  LS. ,  1  :  408.  Daeudels  also  had  forbidden  this 
practice. 


222  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

ject,  and  testify  to  their  desire  to  remedy  the  evils.  They 
were,  however,  measures  extremely  difficult  to  carry  out. 
They  required  that  European  ideas  of  business  and  justice 
should  penetrate  to  the  very  recesses  of  the  native  organi- 
zation if  they  were  to  be  established.  Evidence  in  the 
period  immediately  after  their  adoption  shows  that  they 
were  violated  and  that  the  government  was  unable  to 
punish  the  offenders.  ^  If  the  policy  and  spirit  of  the 
commissioners  had  descended  intact  to  their  successors 
in  the  government,  these  salutary  regulations  would  in 
time  have  been  efficiently  upheld.  They  lost  in  force 
when  the  culture  system  was  introduced,  and  were  all  of 
them  repealed  later  to  enable  the  culture  system  to  be 
carried  on. 

The  period  of  the  commissioners'  rule  lasted  less  than 
three  years.  It  was  marked,  as  I  have  shown  in  the  pre- 
ceding paragraphs,  by  a  sincere  attempt  to  realize  the  best 
ideals  that  had  been  proposed  for  the  government  of  the 
natives,  so  far  as  they  were  practicable.  Certain  features 
of  the  commissioners'  policy,  not  yet  referred  to,  will  be 
described  in  connection  with  their  later  development. 
The  general  principles  on  which  the  commissioners  acted, 

1  The  resident  of  Rembang  wrote  in  1823  that  native  officials  drew 
their  salaries  and  kept  their  lands  too ;  European  officials  and  private 
individuals  held  villages  to  service  by  contracting  to  pay  the  land-tax  for 
them.  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  2  :  75.  The  government  stopped  this  last 
abuse  in  one  case  in  1824  (ib.,  2  :  85),  but  no  one  knows  how  many  cases 
there  were  that  passed  unnoticed,  when,  as  in  this  case,  the  resident  him- 
self was  the  offender  and  brought  the  matter  voluntarily  to  the  attention 
of  the  government.  The  resident  of  Japara  reported  in  1823  that  he 
could  not,  with  all  his  other  duties,  undertake  the  investigation  of  the 
frequent  abuses  of  native  officials  ;  the  duty  of  investigation  was  passed 
from  one  to  another  official ;  ib.,  2:  81  ff.  S.  van  Deventer  says  that  he 
gives  only  a  few  examples  of  the  many  abuses  of  native  government  in  this 
period.  A  number  of  these  have  been  collected  by  Van  Soest,  KS. ,  1 :  142  ff. 


ri  THE   PERIOD   OF   THE    DUTCH   RESTORATION  223 

and  which  they  left  to  guide  the  future  government,  can 
be  given  in  summary  in  a  quotation  from  a  speech  of 
Commissioner  Elout,  made  to  his  successors  when  he  left 
India  in  1819.  "•  The  mother-country  has  a  claim  to  a 
full  enjoyment  of  the  advantages  which  its  foreign  pos- 
sessions offer  ;  you  must  work  with  that  in  mind.  But 
the  mother-country  has  no  desire  that  the  people  of  these 
possessions  should  serve  exclusively  to  procure  those  ad- 
vantages ;  it  desires  and  wills  that  the  people  themselves 
should  have  their  part  of  them ;  this  principle  too  you 
must  never  lose  from  mind.  The  mother-country  wills 
yet  more  ;  it  grants  to  strangers  that  they  pluck  fruits  in 
our  garden,  so  long  as  they  do  not  dig  up  our  soil  nor  sow 
it  with  weeds  ;  you  are  to  care  for  this  and  watch  against 
its  abuses."^  As  the  Governor  General,  to  whom  the  chief 
direction  of  affairs  was  now  intrusted,  Baron  van  der 
Capellen,  had  been  himself  one  of  the  commissioners, 
there  seemed  every  likelihood  that  the  spirit  of  their 
policy  would  be  upheld,  and  the  reforms  developed  on  the 
lines  that  they  had  laid  down. 

The  new  government  retained  the  regulations  for  the 
assessment  and  collection  of  the  land-tax,  which  had  been 
established  as  provisional  by  the  commissioners,  and  ex- 
tended their  application  to  new  territory  as  opportunity 
offered. 2     Up  to  the  time  of  the  introduction  of  the  culture 

1  Elout,  Bijd.  (1851),  5.     I  have  translated  somewhat  freely. 

2  The  land-tax  was  introduced  into  new  territory,  gained  by  lease  from 
native  princes,  and  into  parts  of  the  government  domain  where  other  sys- 
tems had  before  been  allowed  to  continue.  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  2  :  89  ff. 
Even  in  the  heart  of  the  government  territory  there  had  been  exemptions 
from  the  tax  on  various  considerations.  So  in  Cheribon,  a  village  was 
freed  from  the  tax  on  condition  that  it  supplied  four  men  daily  to  watch 
a  prison.  In  1826  the  government  relieved  the  vDlage  of  this  duty  and 
subjected  it  to  the  regular  tax  ;  as  a  result  the  government  was  enabled  to 


224  THE  DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

system  the  yield  of  the  land-tax  increased  steadily,  as 
will  be  seen  from  the  following  figures  giving  actual  net 
returns,  in  gulden  :  ^  — 

1818 3,259,933  1824 5,436,348 

1819 3,876,221  1825 5,293,792 

1820 4,012,228  1826 6,128,668 

1821 4,418,814  1827 5,803,449 

1822 4,997,771  1828 5,493,416 

1823 5,413,530  1829 5,972,706 

The  administration  of  the  tax  was,  however,  still  very 
irregular.  The  commissioners  had  been  forced  by  need  of 
funds  to  hurry  the  officials  in  the  collection  of  1818,  to  the 
harm  of  the  principles  which  they  had  laid  down,^  and  evi- 
dence extending  all  through  the  period  now  under  consid- 
eration shows  that  principles  were  generally  disregarded 
by  the  residents  and  collectors.  In  some  districts  officials 
attempted,  apparently,  to  carry  on  an  individual  settle- 
ment,^ which  had  been  abandoned  by  the  commissioners 
in  favor  of  the  village  system,  while  in  others  the  tax  was 
imposed,  not  on  villages  separately  but  on  a  group  of  vil- 
lages, five  or  more,  under  one  native  official.  It  is  appar- 
ent that  this  last  departure  tended  to  defeat  the  plan  of 
the  commissioners  to  minimize  the  influence  of  native  offi- 
cials ;  if  one  man  contracted  for  the  taxes  of  a  whole  dis- 

hire  police  officials  to  do  what  the  villagers  had  doue  before,  and  still  had 
a  considerable  surplus  from  the  tax  yield  of  the  village  ;  ib.,  2  :  103.  In 
extending  the  land-tax  to  new  territory  the  government  did  not  always 
follow  the  general  principles  of  assessment  laid  down  by  the  commission- 
ers (cf.  LS.,  2 :  90,  92),  but  the  departures  seem  to  have  been  of  no  great 
practical  importance. 

1  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  2  :  129.  Other  tables  show  comparatively  slight 
losses  by  remissions,  etc.     The  effects  of  the  Java  war  appear  after  1825. 

^  Ibid.,  1:396. 

8  So  in  Kadoe,  1819,  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  2  :  11. 


VI  THE  PERIOD  OF  THE   DUTCH  RESTORATION  225 

ti'ict,  he  would  have  inevitably  great  political  power  in  the 
district  and  could  hardly  be  stopped  from  abusing  it.^ 
The  independence  and  arbitrary  character  of  the  residents' 
actions  are  illustrated  by  the  case  of  the  resident  of  Soera- 
baya,  who  changed  the  method  of  assessment  in  his  resi- 
dency without  consultation  with  the  government  and 
caused  a  great  decrease  in  the  yield  of  the  tax.^  A  report 
of  1823^  said  that  the  establishment  and  administration  of 
the  tax  in  the  residency  Rembang  were  incomplete,  that 
the  assistant  did  not  follow  the  principles  of  the  tax  laws, 
and  that  the  collection  was  often  carried  on  with  force. 

Enough  has  been  said  to  show  that  the  land-tax,  in  its 
practical  application,  was  still  full  of  faults.  They  were 
faults,  however,  that  were  to  be  expected  when  an  un- 
trained European  administration  attempted  to  introduce 
a  new  system  of  dealing  with  the  native  organization ; 
they  did  not  vitiate  the  principles  on  which  the  system 
was  based,  or  preclude  the  hope  of  improvement  as  the 

^  lb.,  2 :  580,  shown  in  Kadoe  by  a  report  of  1833.  An  attempt  made 
in  1837  to  reform  tliis  condition  was  apparently  a  failure,  for  a  report  of 
the  Director  of  Cultures  in  1844  shows  it  still  existing  ;  ib.,  3 :  79,  198. 
The  arrangement  seems  to  have  resulted  from  preexisting  institutions  in 
the  native  organization. 

2  The  decrease  amounted  in  one  year  to  over  400,000  gulden,  about 
one-thirteenth  of  the  total  yield  of  the  tax  in  all  Java.  The  resident 
asserted  that  the  larger  part  of  this  decrease  was  due  to  a  failure  of  the 
crops,  and  that  the  rest,  about  150,000  gulden,  represented  an  alleviation 
of  the  burdens  of  the  population  necessary  to  prevent  their  emigration. 
The  government  refused,  however,  to  accept  these  excuses,  and  charged 
the  resident  with  an  unwarranted  disregard  of  instructions.  S.  van  De- 
venter,  LS.,  2 :  123  ff.  Van  Deventer,  ib.,  2 :  14,  shows  that  some  of  the 
reports  from  the  tax  collectors,  purporting  to  show  the  principles  accord- 
ing to  which  the  tax  was  administered,  cannot  be  taken  as  a  picture  of 
the  actual  conditions ;  they  were  office  documents,  worth  only  the  paper 
on  which  they  were  pi-inted, 

8  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  2  :  75. 


226  THE  DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

Dutch  officials  increased  their  knowledge  by  experience. 
Judged  by  the  most  practical  consideration,  the  payments 
to  the  treasury,  the  tax  was  a  success,  and  it  needed  only 
time  to  have  remedies  found  to  stop  the  abuses  in  its 
workings.  In  the  years  just  before  1830,  when  the  land- 
tax  gave  way  to  the  culture  system  as  the  main  source  of 
revenue,  the  Indian  government  was  busied  with  investi- 
gations and  preparations  that  would  enable  it  to  overcome 
the  faults  of  the  tax.  It  had  begun  the  organization  of  a 
force  to  carry  on  a  cadastral  survey  and  had  appointed  a 
commission  to  undertake  the  reform  of  the  tax  when  the 
outbreak  of  the  Java  war  of  1825  and  interference  from 
the  Netherlands  prevented  the  execution  of  its  plans. ^ 
Through  pressure  from  the  home  government  the  culture 
system  was  introduced,  and  with  it  began  a  long  period  of 
reversion  to  the  principles  of  the  East  India  Company  that 
thrust  into  the  background  all  plans  for  reform. 

In  the  period  after  the  departure  of  the  commissioners  in 
1819  there  is  observable  a  tendency  in  India  to  gravitate 
back  to  the  Company's  policy,  though  it  was  never  strong 
enough  to  lead  to  the  open  sacrifice  of  the  tax  system  to 
that  policy,  and  would  not  have  led  to  the  culture  system 
except  for  the  influence  of  the  home  government.  Such  a 
tendency  to  reversion  was  natural,  considering  that  many 
Indian  officials  had  been  trained  under  the  old  system,  that 
parts  of  that  system  had  been  retained  by  the  commis- 
sioners, and  that  the  extension  of  it  was  easy  and  seemed 
profitable. 

According  to  Merkus,  who  had  an  excellent  opportu- 
nity to  observe  the  workings  of  the  government  from  an 
official  position,  there  never  was  any  earnest  attempt  to 
1  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  2  :  113  ff. 


VI  THE   PERIOD   OF  THE  DUTCH  RESTORATION  227 

carry  into  practice  the  rules  that  the  commissioners  laid 
down  in  the  law  of  1817  for  the  regulation  of  the  "  free  " 
coffee  culture.  The  coffee  lands  were  not  leased  to  the 
villages  in  return  for  the  payment  of  a  tax  or  rent,  but 
forced  upon  them  ;  the  proposal  of  the  government  to 
undertake  the  cultivation  by  wage  labor  of  land  which  the 
natives  did  not  care  to  work  on  the  terms  offered  them 
remained  a  dead  letter,  because  the  natives  were  not  given 
the  privilege  of  a  choice.  Provisions  for  the  valuation  of 
the  lands  were  not  carried  out ;  they  were  arbitrarily 
assessed  in  various  ways,  and  a  cash  return  was  required 
from  them  without  the  option  of  paying  in  kind.  "■  In 
a  word,  the  chief  principles  of  the  system  adopted  by  the 
Commissioners  General  was  never  put  in  practice ;  the 
main  object  that  they  had  in  view,  voluntary  labor  and 
free  disposal  of  the  product,  was  lost  entirely.'*  ^  The 
officials  did  in  form  allow  the  natives  free  disposal  of  the 
crop  remaining  after  paying  the  government  dues,  but 
with  such  restrictions  as  made  it  of  little  value.  Officials 
refused  to  pay  the  prices  which  the  law  prescribed  for 
them  in  the  purchase  of  the  product,  and  natives  were 
forced  to  sell  their  crop  to  private  dealers  at  five  cents  a 
measure  when  the  government  was  supposed  to  offer 
twenty-three  cents.^ 

It  is  said  that  the  nullification  of  the  liberal  coffee  regu- 
lations of  the  commissioners  was  the  work  of  the  provin- 

iMerkus,  "Koncept-voorstel,"  1832,  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  2:504. 

2  Woordenboek  van  NI.,  2:173.  Meanwhile,  as  the  price  of  coffee 
in  the  world  market  rose,  the  government  demanded  larger  and  larger 
money  payments  as  commntation  for  the  coffee  delivery.  S.  van  Deven- 
ter, LS.,  1:  276  n.  The  government  accepted  payment  in  kind  in  some 
districts,  but  required  money  in  many  residencies  even  as  late  as  Mcrkus's 
report  of  18.32.     LS.,  2:506. 


228  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

cial  officials  ;  there  appear  to  be  no  laws  of  the  Indian 
government  by  which  it  was  authorized,  however  freely 
it  may  have  been  condoned  or  even  incited  by  the  central 
administration.  The  attack  of  the  government,  on  the 
system  of  free  cultures  that  the  commissioners  had  de- 
signed to  establish,  was  indirect ;  the  government  did  not 
officially  abolish  the  free  cultivation  of  coffee,  but  did 
make  it  practically  impossible  by  refusing  one  of  the  con- 
ditions necessary  for  its  existence.  The  whole  theory  of 
the  tax  system,  as  it  had  been  formulated  by  Dirk  van 
Hogendorp  and  others,  implied  a  certain  freedom  of  inter- 
nal trade  by  which  the  natives  would  be  enabled  to  get 
the  greatest  returns  for  their  labor  and  would  thereby  be 
in  a  position  to  pay  higher  dues  and  at  the  same  time 
enjoy  greater  comfort  than  before.  In  regard  to  a  tax 
levied  in  kind  on  one  of  the  staple  products  of  the  natives, 
like  rice,  this  consideration  was  not  of  a  very  great  weight. 
If,  however,  the  natives  were  to  be  encouraged  or  com- 
pelled to  engage  in  the  production  of  an  article  like  cof- 
fee, the  value  of  which  depended  almost  entirely  on  the 
demand  of  the  export  trade,  it  was  of  the  greatest  impor- 
tance that  they  should  be  brought  into  close  relations  with 
the  export  merchants  and  be  enabled  to  market  their  crops 
to  the  best  advantage.  The  organization  of  trade  among 
the  natives  of  Java  was  so  undeveloped  that  it  offered 
few  facilities  for  the  accomplishment  of  this  end,  and 
wljen  the  cultivators  were  left  to  rely  upon  it  in  disposing 
of  their  coffee,  they  lost  all  the  opportunity  for  gain  which 
a  great  demand  in  Europe  for  their  coffee  seemed  to 
assure  them.  They  fell  into  the  hands  of  their  officials, 
and  of  the  country  usurers,  Chinese,  Moors,  and  half- 
breed  Europeans,  who  exploited  them  without  mercy  and 


VI  THE  PERIOD  OF  THE   DUTCH  RESTORATION  229 

pocketed  all  the  profits  of  the  culture.  The  translation 
of  a  report  from  the  resident  of  Pasoeroean,  quoted  by 
Merkus,^  will  show  what  conditions  resulted.  "  The 
trade  in  the  coffee  of  Malang  (the  richest  district  in  this 
product  in  all  Java,  not  excepting  the  Preanger  regen- 
cies) is  now  in  the  hands  of  two,  at  most  three,  merchants 
of  Pasoeroean,  who  go  to  Malang  in  the  so-called  coffee 
season  to  see  that  the  contracts  into  which  they  have 
entered  are  carried  out.  Months  previously  these  mer- 
chants make  contracts  with  natives,  Arabians,  and  also 
Chinese  to  deliver  them  certain  quantities  of  coffee 
within  a  fixed  time,  generally  the  months  July,  August, 
September,  and  October,  for  prices  of  7  to  10  gulden. 
When  the  contracts  are  made,  such  considerable  advances 
are  given  that  they  often  amount  to  as  much  as  the  stipu- 
lated prices,  and  this  under  condition  that  if  the  amount 
contracted  for  is  not  delivered  at  the  time  fixed,  the 
contractor  or  furnisher  must  pay  20  gulden  for  every 
pikol  short.  These  so-called  djoeragans  ....  are  not 
themselves  the  purchasers  of  the  coffee  but  make  oral 
contracts  in  turn  with  smaller  dealers,  even  with  the 
head-men  of  the  villages,  by  which  it  often  happens  that 
five,  six,  up  to  eight  or  more  persons  are  engaged  in  such 
transactions.  Only  in  rare  cases  do  they  make  advances 
to  the  common  villager,  but  buy  the  coffee  of  him  for  de- 
livery in  a  certain  number  of  months.  The  native,  who 
lives  in  the  present  and  is  not  used  to  looking  ahead,  sells 
them  his  coffee  indift'erently  at  4  to  5  gulden  copper 
per  pikol,  with  little  thought  of  the  higher  price  whicli  it 
will  be  worth  in  a  few  months."  Conditions  varied,  but 
in  many  parts  of  Java  were  even  worse  than  those  pic- 
1  "Koncept-voorstel,"  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  2  :  505-506. 


230  THE  DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

tured  in  Malang ;  Merkus  gives  as  a  fair  picture  of  them 
the  following  example.  A  village  whose  product  is 
estimated  at  30  pikols  of  coffee  is  assessed  for  two-lifths  of 
it,  or  12  pikols,  making  a  total  of  204  gulden  at  the  price 
fixed  in  the  year  (1831,  in  the  example)  by  the  govern- 
ment, at  17  gulden  a  pikol.  Supposing  that  the  head-man 
sells  at  8  gulden  and  disposes  of  the  money  honestly  among 
the  villagers,  they  get  240  gulden,  36  gulden  more  than 
the  amount  of  the  tax,  or  pay  for  their  coffee  at  the  rate 
of  1.20  gulden  a  pikol.  On  the  other  hand,  if  the  head- 
man, by  reason  of  dishonesty  or  of  other  circumstances, 
accounts  only  for  6  gulden  a  pikol  or  180  gulden,  the 
village  will  have  to  pay  24  gulden  more  than  it  gets  for 
its  whole  coffee  crop,  and  will  have  to  make  up  this  differ- 
ence from  some  other  source.^ 

To  any  one  who  has  studied  at  all  extensively  the 
workings  of  undeveloped  industrial  organizations,  it  will 
be  apparent  that  the  evils  pictured  in  these  accounts  were 
due  largely  to  the  ignorance  of  the  people  themselves,  and 
that  a  complete  eradication  of  them  could  come  about 
only  when  the  mass  of  the  people  had  been  educated  to 
a  certain  level  of  intelligence  and  foresight.  It  will  be 
apparent  also,  however,  that  the  one  sure  means  a  govern- 
ment could  adopt  to  minimize  the  evils  was  a  stimulation 
of  competition  among  the  merchants  which  would  protect 
the  cultivators  at  least  to  some  extent  against  the  abuse 
of  their  ignorance.  It  Avas  impossible  to  dispense  alto- 
gether with  native  or  Oriental  traders,  and  as  long  as 
they  continued  to  be  middlemen,  it  was  idle  to  expect  a 
complete  reform,  but  the  government  could  at  least  en- 
courage the  settlement  in  the  island  of  European  capital- 
1  "  Koncept-voorstel,'"  1.  c,  507. 


VI  THE  PERIOD   OF  THE  DUTCH   RESTORATION  231 

ists  and  merchants  and  could  hope  for  improvement  so 
far  as  their  influence  extended.  Laws  against  abuses 
were  as  powerless  as  humanitarian  preaching  would  be  ; 
the  government  must  choose  for  its  agents  business  men 
sufficiently  well  educated  in  the  European  code  to  realize 
that  the}^  consulted  their  own  interests  when  they  took 
some  care  for  the  cultivators  and  assured  them,  so  far  as 
they  could,  a  fair  reward  for  their  labor.  The  question 
of  colonization,  which  had  always  been  neglected  before, 
when  there  had  been  little  for  settlers  to  do,  assumed  a 
new  importance  when  the  change  was  made  from  a  system 
of  forced  labor  under  native  administration  to  a  system  of 
taxation  administered  by  the  gov-ernment.  It  was  impos- 
sible to  introduce  a  European  fiscal  system  without  basing 
it  on  a  European  business  system,  and  it  was  impossible  to 
get  the  European  business  system  without  the  Europeans. 

It  would  unnecessarily  complicate  the  discussion  to 
take  up  at  this  point  the  arguments  for  and  against  the 
admission  of  Europeans  to  the  island  as  planters,  with 
a  permanent  right  to  the  land ;  the  question  of  land  sales 
to  the  Europeans  can  be  considered  to  better  advantage 
in  connection  with  the  government's  land  policy  in  later 
times.  It  was  not  essential  to  the  prosperity  of  Java 
that  Europeans  should  have  indefeasible  rights  to  the 
land  and  extensive  power  over  the  native  cultivators.  It 
was  essential,  however,  that  they  should  have  free  access 
to  the  different  parts  of  the  island,  and  every  opportunity 
to  reach  the  products,  if  not  the  persons,  of  the  natives. 

Before  the  period  of  the  commissioners,  1816-1819, 
there  had  been  but  slight  opportunity  for  Europeans  to 
settle  in  Java.  Raffles,  in  adopting  and  applying  the 
liberal  principles  that  Dirk  van  Hogendorp  had  formu- 


232  THE  DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

lated,  failed  to  carry  them  out  in  their  entirety ;  he  not 
only  forbade  the  leasing  of  land  to  Europeans,  but  also 
hindered  their  settlement  in  the  interior  as  merchants 
by  vexatious  restrictions.^  Muntinghe  favored  a  more 
generous  policy,  at  least  in  the  concessions  he  was 
inclined  to  make  to  European  planters,  though  he  urged 
that  no  land  grants  should  be  made  to  them  except  under 
careful  restrictions  to  safeguard  the  rights  of  the  natives.^ 
The  regulations  that  were  finally  adopted  by  the  com- 
missioners were  thoroughly  liberal.  The  privilege  of 
settlement  could  be  obtained  from  the  Governor  General 
under  no  more  onerous  condition  than  the  taking  of  an 
oath  to  observe  the  laws ;  this  privilege  comprised  the 
right  to  choose  freely  the  place  where  the  petitioner 
would  settle  and  the  occupation  that  he  would  carry  on. 
The  commissioners  made  it  the  duty  of  the  Indian  gov- 
ernment to  extend  agriculture  by  the  grant  of  lands  and 
the  encouragement  of  the  European  population,  and  gave 
liberty  to  persons  desirous  of  establishing  industries  to 
make  the  necessary  arrangements  for  land  and  labor  with 
the  natives.^  The  beginnings  of  an  organized  industry 
are  to  be  found  in  the  earliest  part  of  the  commissioners' 
rule,  when  one  resident  reported,  as  an  example  of  what 
could  be  accomplished  by  free  cultivation  and  free  trade, 

1  M.  L.  van  Deventer,  NG.,  cxlv  ;  Min.,  1813,  Sub.,  270.  He  regarded 
the  pennission  to  Europeans  to  lease  lands  as  "altogether  unadvisable  on 
every  account." 

2  Report  of  1817,  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  1  :  282-283,  345  ff.  Many  of 
his  restrictions  on  land  grants  v?ere  adopted  in  the  liberal  period  after  the 
culture  system.  Elout,  Bijdragen,  1851,  report  of  1819,  discusses  at  con- 
siderable length  the  conditions  under  which  European  planters  might  be 
admitted. 

3  Reg.  Reg.,  1818,  Art.  92  ff.,  106,  111,  Mijer,  Verz.,  420  ff.  ;  M.  L.  van 
Deventer,  NG.,  cxlviff. 


VI  THE   PERIOD   OF  THE   DUTCH  RESTORATION  2;]3 

that  a  single  energetic  manufacturer  in  Pekalongan  had 
made  in  the  year  a  greater  amount  of  indigo  than  had 
ever  before  been  made  in  all  Java  in  the  same  length  of 
time.i  Many  petitions  were  addressed  to  the  government 
for  the  grant  of  waste  lands,  and  the  prospects  of  indus- 
trial progress  on  the  new  lines  seemed  bright. 

Baron  van  der  Capellen,  however,  the  new  Governor 
General,  seems  to  have  been  overcome  by  a  reactionary 
spirit  after  the  departure  of  his  fellow-commissioners. 
"  One  is  amazed,"  writes  Pierson  of  the  period  after  1819, 
"at  the  lack  of  intelligence,  the  narrowness,  which  the 
Indian  government  then  showed."  Van  der  Capellen  in 
the  seven  years  of  his  rule  entirely  ignored  the  principles 
that  had  been  established  for  his  guidance  and  reverted 
step  by  step  to  the  old  system.  On  the  pretext  of  protect- 
ing the  native  population  against  exploitation  the  govern- 
ment discouraged  the  settlement  of  European  planters, 
"  regarding  them  as  parasitic  plants,  consuming  tlie  nour- 
ishing sap  of  the  tree  without  rendering  fruit  themselves. 
From  1819  to  1826  the  European  planters  or  entrepreneurs 
received  no  encouragement  whatever.  The  regulations  of 
the  colonial  constitution,  to  which  reference  has  been  made, 
remained  a  dead  letter,  and  the  culture  of  sugar,  of  indigo, 
and  of  everything  that  requires  the  application  of  capital 
for  its  manufacture,  was  ruined.  The  culture  of  coffee  de- 
creased also  in  so  far  as  Europeans  engaged  in  it,  while  on 
the  other  hand  the  coffee  plantations  which,  as  an  exception 
to  the  general  rule,  were  planted  by  the  Javanese  under 
command  from  the  government,  were  extended.  "^     A  law 

1  Report  of  De  Salis,  September,  1816,  M.  L.  van  Deventer,  NG.,  88, 

2  Secret  report,  Minister  to  King,  Mar.  17,  1831,  S.  van  Deventer, 
LS.,  2  :  182.     Report  of  Minister  to  King,  May  15,  1828,  Elout,  Bijdragen 


234  THE   DUTCH   IN  JAVA  chap. 

of  1821  forbade  all  Europeans  to  trade  or  settle  in  the 
Preanger  regencies  (a  coffee  district)  without  the  written 
permission  of  the  resident,  and  prohibited  except  under 
the  same  possibility  of  dispensation  the  maintenance  by 
Europeans  or  other  foreigners  of  warehouses  or  trading 
posts  at  any  distance  from  the  centres  of  provincial  gov- 
ernment.^ The  law  was  on  its  face  designed  to  protect 
the  natives  against  the  extortions  of  merchants,  but  it 
was  one  of  those  remedies  that  can  cure  a  disease  only  by 
killing  the  patient ;  granting  that  foreign  merchants  had 
been  guilty  of  oppression,  the  people  were  certainly  better 
off  under  them  than  when  left  helpless  in  the  hands  of 
the  native  usurers.  A  stronger  motive  behind  the  law 
was  the  jealousy  that  the  government  already  felt  against 
the  participation  of  European  individuals  in  the  coffee 
trade,  even  at  a  time  when  the  cultivation  and  commerce 
of  coffee  were  nominally  free,  and  when  the  government 
still  forced  the  natives  to  dispose  of  their  product  to 
dealers. 

The  spirit  in  which  the  government  acted  in  this  period 
can  be  learned  from  the  case  of  a  Dutchman,  De  Wilde, 
who   administered    with   striking  success    a   large  coffee 

(1851),  130  ff.  The  figures  for  sugar  production  given  in  "Woordenboek 
van  NI. ,  3  :  464,  show  a  great  decline  in  the  period  of  the  Dutch  resto- 
ration, but  a  rapid  increase  in  sugar  exports  after  1826. 

1  Veth,  Java,  2  :  346-347.  The  lav?  was  made  still  more  strict  in  1823, 
ih.,  2  :  354.  The  way  in  which  the  law  was  executed  can  be  learned  from 
the  case  of  a  Chinaman,  Tan  Hogoan,  who  had  established  a  warehouse 
in  Japara  for  the  purchase  of  coffee  from  the  people.  Soon  after  the  law 
was  passed  government  officials  broke  into  the  warehouse,  distributed  the 
coffee  among  the  people,  and  took  away  the  books.  The  Chinaman 
sought  vainly  for  restitution  of  the  coffee  ;  he  was  told  that  he  had  settled 
in  a  nearly  deserted  country,  far  removed  from  government  surveillance, 
and  that  he  was  one  of  the  speculators  the  government  wanted  to  get  rid 
of.     S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  2  :  132 ff. 


VI  THE   PERIOD   OF   THE   DUTCH   RESTORATION  235 

plantation  on  land  in  the  Preanger  regencies  that  the 
government  had  sold  outright  in  the  time  of  Raffles,  and 
on  which  it  had  no  right  to  impose  its  trade  restrictions. 
It  demanded,  nevertheless,  that  all  the  coffee  raised  on  the 
estate  should  be  sold  to  the  government  at  a  low  fixed 
price,  and  when  De  Wilde  returned  from  a  visit  to  the 
Netherlands  in  1821,  with  a  royal  decree  commanding  that 
at  least  the  price  paid  for  his  coffee  be  raised,  the  Indian 
government  simply  refused  to  recognize  the  decree,  saying 
that  he  must  have  misled  the  king  by  false  representa- 
tions. Indian  officials  left  nothing  undone  to  harass  De 
Wilde  for  his  presumption,  and  he  and  his  fellow-propri- 
etors were  forced  finally  to  end  the  unequal  contest  by 
selling  out  to  the  government.  ^ 

One  of  the  most  serious  blows  to  the  organization  of 
native  industry  under  Europeans  was  a  law  of  1823  that 
prohibited  leases  to  Europeans  in  the  principalities  of 
Soerakarta  and  Djokjokarta.  Those  states,  the  fragments 
of  the  empire  of  Mataram,  maintained  still  the  old  native 
institution  by  which  officials  were  paid  entirely  by  the 
proceeds  of  land  which  they  held  in  usufruct.  The  offi- 
cials, as  has  been  stated  in  an  earlier  chapter,  did  not 
themselves  manage  their  estates,  but  sublet  them,  and  at 
this  period  they  had  in  many  cases  European  planters  as 
lessees.  Europeans  could  afford  to  offer  a  much  higher 
rental  than  natives  because  they  did  not  rest  content  with 
old  crops  and  customs  of  cultivation,  but  stimulated  the 
growth  of  export  staples  from  which  they  secured  a  large 
return.  The  system  worked  greatly  to  the  advantage  of 
the  native  officials  and  of  the  planters,  and  while  there 

1  Veth,  2  :  352  ff.  An  appeal  to  the  home  government  secured  no 
redress.    Cf.  Elout,  Bijdragen  (1851),  169-170. 


236  THE   DUTCH   IN  JAVA  chap. 

was  undoubtedly  the  possibility  of  an  abuse  of  the  com- 
mon people,  there  seems  to  be  no  question  that  they  were 
better  off  under  European  lessees  than  under  natives.^ 
The  government  had  no  sound  arguments  that  it  could 
advance  for  the  prohibition  of  the  leases ;  the  reason  for 
the  prohibition  was  not  one  that  could  be  publicly  de- 
fended, though  it  sometimes  showed  itself,  as  in  a  report 
denouncing  the  European  planters  because  they  "  threaten" 
to  increase  greatly  the  production  of  coffee.  The  govern- 
ment had  returned  to  the  jealous  attitude  of  the  East 
India  Company,  and  could  tolerate  no  industry,  however 
much  it  might  conduce  to  the  welfare  of  the  people,  so 
long  as  it  seemed  likely  to  affect  the  immediate  interests 
of  the  treasury. 2 

The  prohibition  imposed  serious  losses  on  the  lessees, 
who  had  in  many  cases  entered  into  engagements  for  long 
terms  of  years,  and  had  invested  considerable  amounts  of 
capital,  and  it  created  such  a  disturbance  in  the  internal 
organization  of  the  principalities  that  it  counts  as  one  of 
the  main  causes  of  the  Java  war  of  1825-1830. 

During  the  continuance  of  this  war  an  attempt  was 
made  by  a  new  commissioner,  Du  Bus  de  Ghisignies,  to 
undo  some  of  the  mischief  wrought  by  Capellen.  Du 
Bus  was  a  hearty  supporter  of  the  liberal  principles,  and 
favored  the  encouragement  of  European  immigration,  but 
he  was  prevented  by  the  state  of  war  in  Java  and  by  the 
opposition  of  the  king  from  accomplishing  any  results  of 
lasting  importance.  Both  what  he  did  and  what  he  pro- 
posed to  do  vanished  without   effect   under  the   culture 

1  Cf.  Veth,  2  :  343 ff.  ;  Deinse,  "De  Toestand  in  de  Vorstenlanden," 
Leiden,  1887,  p.  70  ;  Pierson,  KP.,  63 ;  Van  Soest,  KS.,  1 :  113. 

2  Veth,  2  :  349 ;  Pierson,  KP.,  66. 


VI  THE   PERIOD   OF   THE   DUTCH   RESTORATION  237 

system.  This  system,  as  will  be  shown  in  the  next  chap- 
ter, was  due  mainly  to  the  peculiar  conditions  at  home, 
partly  to  the  effect  of  the  Java  war  on  the  Indian  treasury. 
Van  der  Capellen  made  the  introduction  of  the  system 
easy  if  not  inevitable  by  the  reactionary  policy  that  he 
had  pursued,  and  he  bears  more  responsibility  than  any 
other  of  tlie  Dutch  rulers  of  Java  up  to  this  time  for  the 
evils  of  the  following  period. 

In  tracing  the  history  of  the  Dutch  policy  in  the  East, 
it  is  impossible  at  times  to  avoid  sharp  transitions  from 
one  topic  to  another.  The  natural  continuation  of  the 
description  I  have  given  of  the  measures  of  the  govern- 
ment in  the  third  decade  of  the  century  would  be  the 
narrative  of  the  introduction  and  spread  of  the  culture 
system.  Before  taking  that  up,  however,  it  will  be  neces- 
sary to  treat  a  topic  which  has  but  slight  connection  with 
the  internal  conditions  of  Java  and  the  domestic  problems 
that  have  been  under  discussion.  This  is  the  topic  of 
foreign  trade  and  commercial  policy. 

At  the  restoration  of  Dutch  rule  under  the  commissioners 
in  1816  the  scale  of  customs  duties  left  by  the  British  was 
maintained  for  a  time  without  change.  This  scale  of 
duties  had,  however,  been  altered  in  1815  and  1816  to 
secure  to  the  British  after  the  change  in  government  which 
they  saw  impending  the  favor  of  low  duties  and  equal 
privileges  with  the  Dutch,  and  was  a  legacy  to  the  new 
government  for  which  it  owed  few  thanks.^  Dutch  com- 
merce revived  but  slowly  after  the  restoration  of  peace  in 

1  According  to  the  figures  in  Norman,  BH.,  267,  the  general  duty  on 
goods  imported  from  abroad  was  lowered  from  10  to  6  % ;  apparently  the 
differential  established  in  1815  was  still  maintained  against  all  other  ships 
than  Dutch  and  British. 


238  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

Europe  in  1815,  while  British  and  American  merchants 
maintained  and  extended  the  trade  which  they  had  begun 
in  Java  during  the  previous  interval.  These  foreign 
merchants  deserved  their  prosperity,  for  they  studied  as 
the  Dutch  had  never  done  the  needs  of  the  natives,  and 
by  importing  staples  for  their  use  they  could  afford  to 
underbid  other  traders  for  the  exports  of  the  island.^ 
The  Dutch  saw  themselves,  to  all  appearances,  robbed  of 
the  benefits  which  they  had  hoped  to  secure  from  the 
public  control  of  their  Eastern  possessions  and  soon  pro- 
tested. The  king,  who  had  been  "  very  unpleasantly 
impressed  "  by  the  arrival  of  an  American  ship  at  Amster- 
dam bringing  a  cargo  of  coffee  directly  to  the  Netherlands, 
was  assured  that  measures  would  be  taken  to  protect  trade 
against  the  encroachments  of  Americans  ;  these  measures 
were  demanded  also  by  the  Chambers  of  Commerce  of 
Amsterdam  and  Rotterdam,  which  urged  a  differential 
of  20  to  25^0  or  even  more  to  help  Dutch  shipping.^ 
The  colonial  constitution  of  1815  had  laid  down  the  prin- 
ciple to  guide  the  commissioners  that  Dutch  ships  and 
cargoes  should  pay  less  than  foreign,^  and  this  principle 
was  carried  out  in  1818  by  a  tariff  which  imposed    on 

1  M.  L.  van  Deventer,  NG.,  cxliv.  Jaussaud  wrote  in  his  "Memoire 
sur  la  commerce,"  1810,  Jonge,  Opk.,  13:517,  "la  consommation  des 
denr^es  d' Europe  est  assez  born6.  Cinq  ou  six  cargaisons  suffisent  pour 
en  approvisionner  le  pays  et  faire  tomber  consid^rablement  le  prix." 
"Wliile  the  foreign  mercliants  were  extending  commerce  by  tlieir  sales  to 
the  native  population  the  Director  General  of  the  colonies  could  encourage 
the  Dutch  king  only  by  referring  to  the  increase  in  Dutch  trade  likely  to 
ensue  from  the  demand  for  supplies  on  the  part  of  the  government.  M. 
L.  van  Deventer,  NG.,  201. 

2  Director  General  of  Colonies  to  Commissioner  General,  Sept.  26, 1817, 
M.  L.  van  Deventer,  NG.,  200. 

8  Art.  87,  Mijer  Verz.,  394. 


VI  THE  PERIOD  OF  THE  DUTCH  RESTORATION  239 

foreigners  double  the  duties  paid  by  the  Dutch,  12fo 
against  6fo.  Still  more  effective  protection  was  granted 
the  next  year  by  a  royal  decree  which  exempted  from 
all  duty  whatever  products  of  Dutch  origin  when  im- 
ported into  Java  in  Dutch  ships. ^  In  spite  of  all  these 
favors  to  Dutch  commerce,  less  than  one-third  in  value 
of  the  imports  into  Java  in  1819  were  carried  by  the 
Dutch,  who  entered  only  43  ships  out  of  a  total  of  171,^ 
and  Crawford,  whose  book  was  published  in  1820,  could 
speak  of  the  Americans  as  being  "  in  fair  possession  of  by 
far  the  most  valuable  part  "  of  the  Indian  trade.^  Dutch 
manufacturers  and  merchants  showed  themselves  especially 
weak  in  the  trade  in  piece-goods,  which  alone  formed  the 
bulk  of  the  imports  for  native  consumption,  and  in  which 
the  English  had  had  almost  a  monopoly.  By  a  law  of 
1824  passed  "  to  encourage  and  support  so  far  as  possible 
the  enterprises  of  manufacturers  in  the  mother-country  " 
all  cotton  and  woollen  goods  manufactured  in  foreign 
countries  west  of  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope  were  subjected 
to  a  duty  of  25fo  ad  valorem,  with  an  additional  10^, 
making  35^  in  all,  if  they  were  imported  through  some 
country  east  of  the  Cape.*  These  regulations,  aimed 
especially  against  the  English  trade  in  piece-goods,  were 

1  N.  P.  van  den  Berg,  art.  Rechten,  Encyc.  NI.,  3  :  379. 

»  Speech  of  Van  Alphen,  Session  1825-1826,  De  Waal,  NISG.,  1  :  228. 
Of  the  imports  to  a  total  value  of  fl.  5,885,083,  the  Dutch  entered  but 
1,843,144  while  the  English  entered  3,378,406.  Of  the  ships  62  were 
English  and  50  American.  Van  Alphen's  summary  of  the  tariff  history 
of  this  period  does  not  agree  in  all  respects  with  that  of  Van  den  Berg,  but 
the  two  accounts  seem  to  supplement  rather  than  contradict  each  other. 

3  Hist.,  3  :  289.  He  presents  an  interesting  discussion  of  the  relative 
advantages  of  the  English  and  Americans. 

*  Van  den  Berg,  1.  c.  The  attack  on  the  foreign  piece-goods  by  means 
of  special  differentials  was  begun  in  1823.     Van  Alphen,  op.  cit.,  233. 


240  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

opposed  to  the  terms  of  the  treaty  made  immediately 
afterwards  with  England,  by  which  each  power  prom- 
ised that  merchants  of  the  other  power  should  pay  in  the 
Eastern  possessions  not  more  than  double  the  duties 
exacted  from  citizens  of  the  mother-country,  or  not  more 
than  6^  if  the  goods  were  free  for  citizens  of  the  mother- 
country.  Not  till  years  afterward,  however,  and  only  as 
the  result  of  constant  protests  from  England,  was  the 
tariff  brought  into  conformity  with  the  treat}-. ^ 

Mention  has  been  made  in  a  previous  chapter  of  the 
nearly  universal  belief  held  in  the  time  of  the  East  India 
Company  that  the  trade  with  the  Indies  was  better  put  in 
the  hands  of  a  great  corporation  than  left  to  private  indi- 
viduals. When  the  old  East  India  Company  was  abolished, 
the  question  of  calling  into  existence  some  substitute  for 
it  had  for  a  time  no  practical  importance,  as  conditions 
had  stopped  all  trade  between  the  Netherlands  and  Java  ; 
and  when  the  Dutch  recovered  the  island  in  1816,  trade 
vras  left  for  a  time  in  the  hands  of  private  merchants. 
The  feeling,  however,  that  a  great  corporation  was  better 
fitted  than  any  individuals  could  be  to  make  trade  prosper, 
and  to  secure  its  profits  for  the  mother-countr}^,  was  not 
dead.  It  was  expressed  by  a  man  so  liberal  in  many 
respects  as  Muntinghe,  who  favored  the  establishment  of 
a  great  trading  company  so  long  as  it  was  denied  the 
monopoly  and  the   sovereign  power  that  had  proved  so 

Figures  given  by  Van  Alphen,  p.  236,  show  that  in  1824  the  imports  of 
Dutch  origin  were  only  half  those  coming  from  England,  and  less  than 
the  total  coming  from  the  rest  of  Europe. 

1  Text  of  the  treaty  of  1824  in  De  Waal,  NISG.,  2  :  79.  It  applied  both 
to  wares  and  to  ships,  ih.,  150.  With  the  exception  of  a  short  period  it 
was  not  executed  in  Java  till  1836,  when  domestic  piece-goods  were  taxed 
12^  %  and  foreign  25  %.     Van  den  Berg,  p.  380. 


VI  THE   PERIOD   OF   THE   DUTCH   RESTORATION       .   241 

disastrous  to  the  East  India  Company  ;  and  it  led  to  the 
incorporation  in  1824  of  the  Dutch  Trading  Company 
(^Nederlandsche  ITandehnaatschappij") . ^ 

The  preamble  of  the  royal  decree  gives  the  following 
reasons  for  the  incorporation  of  the  Company :  trade  with 
Dutch  India  had  not  answered  the  expectations  of  the 
merchants  engaged  in  it,  who  were  kept  in  business  only 
by  the  assistance  of  the  government,  and  who  demanded 
still  more  help  ;  both  India  and  the  Netherlands  suffered 
for  the  lack  of  this  trade  ;  means  must  be  found  to  remedy 
this,  and  to  assure  the  Netherlands  the  advantages  "  to 
which  her  rank  among  peoples,  the  position  of  her  terri- 
tory, and  the  importance  of  her  colonies  give  her  claim  "  ; 
this  means  must  be  sought,  not  "  from  the  example  of  some 
other  nations  "  in  systems  of  exclusion,  but  "  in  a  powerful 
and  well-regulated  union  of  sufficient  capital  and  associ- 
ated labor,  with  the  maintenance  of  free  navigation  for  all 
sailing  under  the  flag  of  the  Netherlands  or  of  a  friendly 
power."  The  Company  was  founded,  accordingly,  to 
further  "the  national  trade,  navigation,  ship-building, 
fisheries,  agriculture,  manufactures  and  business."^ 

It  is  not  unlikely,  in  view  of  the  superstitious  reverence 
with  which  the  East  India  Company  had  long  been  re- 
garded, that  the  Dutch  really  believed  that  the  Company 
could  accomplish  all  that  was  hoped  for  it  and  all  that 
ordinary  merchants  had  failed  to  do.  Whatever  may  be 
thought  of  the  sincerity  of  the  arguments  for  the  public 
benefits  to  be  conferred  by  the  corporation,  it  was  cer- 
tainly regarded  as  a  good  private  investment.  The  king, 
who  created  it  by  his  mere  decree,  took  a  block  of  one- 

1  Report  of  1817,  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  1 :  303,  286. 

2  De  Waal,  NISG.,  1  :  104  ;  Articles  of  Agreement,  No.  65,  ib.,  114. 


242  THE  DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap,  vi 

third  of  the  stock  originally  proposed  and  guaranteed  to 
the  other  stockholders  a  return  of  4|/o;  the  public  over- 
subscribed to  the  remainder  of  the  stock  nearly  ninefold 
on  the  first  day  that  it  was  offered  to  them,  and  the 
capital  was  greatly  increased  to  meet  their  demand.^ 

The  Company  was  to  have  no  peculiar  public  privileges 
such  as  the  East  India  Company  had  enjoyed.  It  was 
especially  enjoined  against  attempts  to  secure  monopoly 
or  to  impose  forced  cultures  on  the  natives  of  India;  it  was 
to  make  its  profits  as  an  ordinary  trader  and  was  to  charter, 
not  own,  the  ships  that  it  employed.  The  main  advantage 
that  the  articles  of  agreement  promised  it  was  the  chance 
to  contract  for  government  business,  and  until  the  culture 
system  built  up  this  business  the  Company's  books  showed 
an  unfavorable  balance. 

1  The  capital  was  set  originally  at  fl.  12,000,000,  with  the  right  of 
increase  to  fl.  24,000,000  ;  the  king  took  fl.  4,000,000.  Public  subscrip- 
tions amounted  to  over  fl.  69,000,000,  and  the  capital  was  raised  to 
fl.  37,000,000.  See  Van  den  Berg,  art.  "  Handel maatschappij,"  Encyc. 
NI.,  2: 10  for  these  and  further  details. 


CHAPTER  VII 

CULTURE   SYSTEM:    POLICY 

[Note.  — For  the  period  of  the  culture  system  S.  van  Deventer's 
Bijdragen  is  the  great  source.  The  documents  contained  in  it  were 
printed  first  in  Tijdschrift  voor  Nederlandsch  Indie,  and  afterward  col- 
lected and  published  separately  ;  an  alphabetical  index  to  both  editions,  by 
proper  names  and  by  subjects,  was  prepared  by  J.  Boudewijnse  and  pub- 
lished in  Bijd.  TLV.,  1867,  3:2:411-534.  E.  de  Waal  prints  speeches  and 
other  parliamentary  documents  relating  to  colonial  affairs  from  1814  to 
1848.  The  Woordenboek  is  valuable  for  its  statistical  information.  Of 
secondary  authorities,  Pierson's  book  is  perhaps  the  most  concise  and  sug- 
gestive. Van  Soest's  Geschiedenis  gives  full  details,  some  from  sources 
not  accessible  to  me.  Piccardt's  Geschiedenis  is  a  convenient  compila- 
tion.    Other  writings  on  the  culture  system  are  criticised  in  the  text.] 

IN  the  previous  chapter  I  have  described  a  condition 
of  affairs  in  Java  that  was  in  unstable  equilibrium,  a 
mixture  of  principle  and  practices  that  were  inconsistent 
with  each  other,  and  would  have  in  the  course  of  time 
to  give  place  to  a  regular  and  consistent  system.  The 
impulse  of  the  commissioners  toward  liberalism  had  spent 
itself  under  Van  der  Capellen,  and  had  been  followed  by 
a  reactionary  movement  toward  the  policy  of  the  East 
India  Company ;  this  movement  had  apparently  not  gone 
so  far  but  that  it  could  be  checked  and  reversed  by  Capel- 
len's  successor,  Du  Bus  de  Ghisignies,  who  was  an  out- 
spoken advocate  of  the  liberal  principles  of  Raffles  and 
the  commissioners.  The  reform  projects  of  Du  Bus  were, 
however,  never  carried  to  fulfilment.  At  this  critical 
point  in  the  development  of  Dutch  policy  events  in  Java 

243 


244  THE  DUTCH   IN  JAVA  chap. 

and  in  the  Netherlands  occasioned  a  return  to  the  policy 
of  the  Company,  which  was  now  retained  almost  unchal- 
lenged for  a  generation. 

Both  in  Java  and  in  the  Netherlands  the  reasons  for 
the  return  to  the  old  system  were  of  a  fiscal  character. 
The  fault  in  Java  did  not  lie  in  the  land-tax,  which  had 
nearly  doubled  its  returns  in  the  period  1818-1829. 
Other  measures  of  the  Indian  government  were,  however, 
not  so  satisfactory  in  their  results,  and  as  the  expendi- 
tures were  allowed  to  increase  without  proper  care  for  the 
means  of  meeting  them,  the  favorable  balance  which  the 
government  could  show  up  to  1820  was  changed  in  that 
and  the  succeeding  years  to  a  deficit. ^  This  need  not 
have  been  in  itself  so  serious  as  to  call  for  any  far-reach- 
ing change  in  policy;  it  could  have  been  remedied  by 
the  exercise  of  a  little  prudence  in  the  Indian  govern- 
ment. A  new  and  very  heavy  demand  on  the  treasury, 
however,  began  to  make  itself  felt  in  1825,  caused  by  the 
outbreak  of  war  with  Dipa  Negara,  the  Sultan  of  the  pro- 
tected principality  of  Djokjokarta,  in  the  centre  of  the 
island. 2  The  policy  of  borrowing  to  cover  the  deficit, 
which  had  been  resorted  to  before  the  outbreak  of  the 
war  by  some  loans  made  on  very  unfavorable  conditions, 
had  now  to  be  continued,  and  by  1830  the  Indian  gov- 

^  The  government  made  a  failure  of  the  salt  manufacture,  and  com- 
mitted the  error  of  an  over-issue  of  paper  money  ;  other  causes,  iiicluding 
a  decline  in  the  price  of  coffee,  combined  to  bring  about  an  annual  deficit 
of  1,000,000  gulden  or  so,  in  a  budget  showing  total  receipts  of  about 
20,000,000.     De  Waal,  NISG :  165-166. 

2  The  causes  of  this  war  were  economic  as  well  as  political  and  religious, 
but  I  must  content  myself  here  merely  with  a  reference  to  its  results,  and 
refer  the  reader  to  the  articles  by  P.  H.  van  der  Kemp  in  Bijd.  TLV., 
1896  and  1897,  and  to  the  reports  of  Elout  in  TNI.,  1864,  2  :  parts  1-2,  for 
full  information. 


VII  CULTURE   SYSTEM:    POLICY  245 

ernment  was  burdened  by  a  debt  of  over  30,000,000 
gulden  and  an  interest  charge  of  over  2,000,000.  Both 
capital  and  interest  were  secured  by  the  home  govern- 
ment. ^ 

Meanwhile  the  government  of  the  Netherlands  had 
come  to  concern  itself  more  and  more  with  the  fiscal 
conditions  of  its  Eastern  possessions.  The  southern 
provinces  (Belgium)  showed  from  the  start  a  disinclina- 
tion to  contribute  to  the  support  of  the  Dutch  colonies,^ 
and  the  king,  who  could  regard  these  colonies  almost  as 
his  private  property  from  the  power  that  the  constitution 
gave  him  over  them,  seemed  anxious  only  that  they 
should  not  be  a  burden  on  his  purse.  Raffles  dined  with 
the  king  in  1817,  and  gave  as  his  impression  "that,  not- 
withstanding the  king  himself  and  his  leading  minister 
seem  to  mean  well,  they  have  too  great  a  hankering  after 
profit,  and  immediate  profit,  for  any  liberal  system  to  thrive 
under  them.  .  .  .  The  king  complained  of  the  coffee 
culture  having  been  neglected,  and  expressed  anxiety 
that  he  should  soon  have  consignments ;  and  while  he 
admitted  all  the  advantages  likely  to  arise  from  cultiva- 
tion, and  assured  me  that  the  system  introduced  under 
my  administration  should  be  continued,  maintained  that 
it  was  essential  to  confine  the  trade,  and  to  make  such 
regulations  as  would  secure  it  and  its  profits  exclusively 
to  the  mother-country." 2     There  is  no  evidence  that  the 

1  Piccardt,  CS.,  70  ;  Pierson,  KP.,  69. 

2  The  Director  General  of  Colonies  wrote  to  the  commissioners,  Oct., 
1816,  that  the  people  of  the  southern  provinces  criticised  colonial  expendi- 
tures in  the  council  and  legislature,  and  that  the  king  was  economical ; 
he  had  asked  for  an  appropriation  of  22,000,000  gulden  for  1817,  and  got 
12,000,000  with  difficulty.     M.  L.  van  Deventer,  NG.,  132. 

1  Raffles  to  Marsden,  July  27,  1817,  Mem.,  289-290. 


246  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

Dutch  government  went  farther  in  the  first  part  of  the 
period  after  the  recovery  of  Java  than  to  urge  economy 
on  the  Indian  government,  without  attempting  to  direct 
the  policy  in  details.^  After  the  establishment  of  the 
trading  company  in  1824,  however,  the  king  took  a  more 
direct  interest  in  Java ;  as  chief  stockholder  in  the  Com- 
pany, and  guarantor  of  its  dividends,  he  felt  severely  the 
losses  imposed  on  him  by  the  ill  success  of  its  operations 
in  its  early  years,  which  cost  him  several  million  gulden. 
In  the  Dutch  parliament  an  opposition  had  grown  up  to 
a  colonial  policy  which  seemed  to  threaten  the  govern- 
ment with  the  support  of  a  weak  dependency,  and  it  was 
feared  that  the  budget  of  1829  would  be  rejected  by  the 
Chambers  unless  assurance  could  be  given  that  the  Dutch 
Indies  would  be  put  in  a  condition  to  meet  their  obliga- 
tions. The  times  were  ripe  for  a  decisive  interference 
from  home  in  the  fiscal  policy  of  the  Indies. 

The  man  who  realized  the  necessities  of  the  situation, 
and  the  ojiportunities  that  it  presented,  was  Lieutenant 
General  van  den  Bosch,  who  had  won  the  king's  confi- 
dence by  service  in  military  and  administrative  positions 
in  the  East  and  West  Indies,  and  who  promised  now  to 
solve  the  colonial  problem.  He  was  made  Governor  Gen- 
eral of  India  in  1828,  took  up  the  active  duties  of  govern- 
ment in  Java  in  the  beginning  of  1830,  and  from  that  date 
to  1839,  when  he  was  forced  to  resign  from  the  office  of 
minister  of  the  colonies,  determined  Dutch  policy  in  the 

1  The  Director  General  of  Colonies  wrote  the  commissioners  in  August, 
1817,  that  it  was  necessary  to  remind  them  from  time  to  time  that  the  king 
expected  the  Indian  possessions  not  only  to  support  themselves  but  to 
repay  advances  made  to  them.  M.  L.  van  Deventer,  NG.,  187.  A  royal 
decree  of  1825  contained  twenty-three  articles  imposing  economy  on  the 
Indian  government.     S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  2  :  97. 


VII  CULTURE   SYSTEM:   POLICY  247 

East  with  practically  absolute  power.  His  successor  as 
minister  of  the  colonies,  Baud  (1840-1848),  had  been 
trained  in  his  school  and  simply  maintained  the  system 
which  Van  den  Bosch  had  established. 

The  plan  of  Van  den  Bosch  was  confessedly  a  return 
to  the  practices  of  the  old  East  India  Company.  He 
reo]3ened  the  question,  which  had  been  so  long  debated, 
of  the  relative  advantages  of  forced  and  free  cultures  in 
Java.^  The  character  of  the  question  had  changed  as  a 
result  of  the  fiscal  obligations  into  which  the  East  Indies 
had  entered.  The  home  government  could  no  longer, 
as  formerly,  afford  to  let  the  opposing  parties  fight  it  out 
at  their  leisure,  but  must  interfere  to  establish  in  the 
shortest  possible  time  the  system  which  promised  the 
best  fiscal  results.  While  the  government  recognized 
that  under  the  scheme  of  the  liberals,  as  represented  by 
Du  Bus  de  Ghisignies,  the  productive  power  of  Java  would 
increase,  yet  this  could  be  but  slowly  and  the  government 
demanded  immediate  returns. ^  Van  den  Bosch  had  just 
returned  from  service  in  the  West  Indies  when  he  was 
consulted  in  the  matter  ;  he  had  had  there  the  opportu- 
nity to  observe  production  by  slave  labor,  and  was  con- 
vinced that  production  in  Java  could  never  compete  with 
it  so  long  as  the  Javanese  were  left  free  to  cultivate  as 
they   chose. 2     When   he   was   asked    for   his   opinion    in 

1  Secret  Report  of  Minister  to  King,  Mar.  17,  1831,  S.  van  Deventer, 
LS.,  2:  181  ff.  To  the  minister  who  presented  these  considerations  to 
the  king  another  point  seemed  of  importance  also  ;  he  saw  no  way  to 
remit  money  to  the  Netherlands,  and  urged  the  necessity  of  securing  the 
payment  of  the  dues  from  Java  in  the  form  of  products  suited  to  export. 

2  Van  der  Hoek,  the  author  of  a  book  published  at  Leiden,  in  1829, 
compared  the  production  of  Java  (for  export)  with  tliat  of  slave-holding 
colonies,  found  that  the  slaves  were  only  one-eighteenth  in  number,  but 
produced  five  to  six  times  the  amount  of  exports  that  came  from  the  people 


248  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

December,  1828,  he  criticised  the  system  of  free  cultures, 
and  thought  that  "the  institutions  of  the  former  East 
India  Company,  of  which  forced  cultures  and  deliveries 
were  the  chief  pillars,  deserved  the  preference."  ^ 

Van  den  Bosch  picked  out  all  the  weak  points  in  the 
practical  working  of  the  land-tax ;  he  showed  that  it  lent 
itself  to  abuse  by  the  native  officials,  and  imposed  on  indi- 
vidual natives  burdens  that  were  beyond  their  ability  to 
bear.  He  asserted  that  under  the  system  of  the  land-tax 
forced  services,  instead  of  being  alleviated,  were  heavier 
than  ever.  He  maintained  that  in  the  half  century  ending 
in  1805,  under  the  Company's  system,  there  had  not  been 
a  serious  political  disturbance,  while  in  the  period  from 
1805  to  1830  there  had  been  nine  revolts  or  wars.  Besides 
this  comparison,  which  was  not  exact  in  the  matter  of 
fact,  and  which  in  any  event  did  not  justify  the  inference 
he  suggested,  he  ]3ut  another  which  made  it  seem  that  the 
natives  preferred  the  districts  of  forced  culture  to  those  of 
the  tax  system.  In  reply  to  the  advocates  of  free  culture 
and  colonization,  he  emphasized  the  amount  of  land  held 
by  the  natives  on  a  communal  tenure  and  exaggerated 
the  difficulties  of  securing   export   products   from   such 

of  Java,  and  reached  the  conckision  that  under  the  existing  system  the 
labor  of  one  slave  was  worth  that  of  one  hundred  Javanese.  S.  van 
Deventer,  LS.,  2:  105. 

1  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  2  :  184.  This  is  quoted  in  the  ministerial  report 
of  1831,  cited  above.  I  regret  that  I  have  not  had  a  chance  to  use  the 
early  reports  of  Bosch,  printed  in  Steijn  Parv^'s  collection.  For  Bosch's 
criticism  of  the  existing  institutions  I  have  drawn  from  his  note  written 
March,  1831,  and  printed  in  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  2 :  227-278.  For  the 
form  of  the  plan  as  originally  proposed  I  must  depend  on  Van  Soest,  KS., 
2  :  43  ff.,  based  on  Bosch's  report  of  March,  1829.  The  features  of  the 
plan  are  repeated,  apparently,  without  change  in  Bosch's  report  of  1834, 
Bijd.  TLV.,  1863,  2 :  7 :  426  ff. 


vii  CULTURE   SYSTEM:   POLICY  249 

land.i  It  would  be  fruitless  to  review  here  all  the  argu- 
ments that  he  brought  forward  to  justify  a  change  of 
policy ;  they  amounted  to  a  general  indictment  of  the  tax 
system,  which  indeed  offered  material  enough  for  criticism.  _^ 

The  plan  of  the  culture  system,  as  proj)osed  by  Van 
den  Bosch  in  1829,  was  in  brief  as  follows :  Instead  of 
paying  to  the  government  a  certain  proportion  of  their 
crops,  the  natives  were  to  put  at  its  disposal  a  certain  pro- 
portion of  their  land  and  labor-time.  The  revenue  would 
then  consist  not  in  rice,  Avhich  was  almost  universally  cul- 
tivated and  which  was  of  comparatively  little  value  to  the 
government,  but  in  export  products  grown  under  the/ 
direction  of  government  contractors  on  the  land  set  free/ 
by  the  remission  of  the  former  tax.  According  to  thej 
estimate,  the  natives  would  give  up  only  one-fifth  of  their 
time  in  place  of  two-fifths  of  their  main  crop.  The  gov- 
ernment proposed  to  bear  the  loss  from  failure  of  crops  if 
this  was  not  directly  due  to  the  fault  of  the  cultivators, 
and  moreover  promised  to  pay  the  natives  a  certain  small 
price  for  such  amounts  as  they  furnished.  The  govern- 
ment proposed  in  this  way  to  secure  products  suited  for 
export  to  the  European  market,  on  which  it  expected  to 
realize  profits  largely  in  excess  of  the  prices  paid  to  natives 
and  contractors,  and  of  the  costs  of  administration.  To 
the  natives  it  promised  increased  prosperity  and  a  lighter 
burden  of  taxation,  as  a  result  of  the  fuller  utilization  of 
their  chances  under  the  far-sighted  management  of  Euro- 
peans. The  labor  that  before  through  carelessness  and 
ignorance  would  have  been  wasted  in  idleness  or  in  the 
cultivation  of  some  cheap  and  superfluous  crop  was  to 
supply  a  product  of  great  value  in  the  world  market,  and 
1  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  265,  241,  229,  245,  244. 


t. 


250  THE   DUTCH   IN  JAVA  chap. 

the  natives  were  to  share  in  the  resulting  profits.  Van 
den  Boscli  justified  his  proposal  not  only  by  the  benefits  it 
would  heap  upon  all  parties,  but  by  reference  to  previous 
history  and  the  character  of  native  institutions  which 
made  it  seem  not  only  impolitic  but  unjust  to  cling  longer 
to  the  land-tax  as  the  basis  of  government  revenue.^ 

To  a  person  unacquainted  with  the  practical  effects  of 
the  culture  system  in  the  period  after  its  adoption,  and 
ignorant  that  the  system  was  but  the  continuation  of  an 
abuse  that  had  existed  since  the  early  period  of  the  East 
India  Company,  the  plan  contained  in  Van  den  Bosch's 
proposal  has  many  attractive  features.  The  system  has 
in  fact  been  judged  so  often  by  the  professions  of  its 
founder  rather  than  by  its  actual  workings,  that  it  has 
been  the  object  of  pretty  general  and  sometimes  ver}- 
extravagant  praise.  The  chances  are,  if  any  one  picks  up 
an  English  book  with  a  reference  in  it  to  the  culture  sys- 
tem, that  he  will  find  the  reference  eulogistic ;  he  will  get 
the  impression  that  the  system  was  a  very  good  one,  and 

1  Cf.  Van  Soest,  KS.,  2  :  44  ;  Pierson,  KP.,  88.  For  a  sharp  criticism 
of  Bosch's  knowledge  of  the  conditions  in  Java,  especially  of  the  native 
institutions  about  which  he  wrote  with  easy  assurance,  see  Veth,  Java, 
2:  409-411.  This  high  authority  on  native  Java  holds  that  all  of  Bosch's 
arguments,  based  on  reference  to  native  institutions,  bear  the  mark  of 
having  been  thought  of  "pour  le  besoin  de  la  cause,"  without  regard  to 
the  actual  facts.  Bosch  had  spent  about  ten  years  in  Java  at  the  begin- 
ning of  the  century  as  an  officer  in  the  army,  and  had  published  a  book 
on  the  Dutch  colonial  possessions  on  his  return  to  the  Netherlands,  but 
his  knowledge  of  the  native  organization  was  never  more  than  superficial. 

Muntinghe,  in  his  report  of  1817,  had  expressed  his  resentment  at  the 
way  in  which  the  Company's  contingent  system  was  made  to  figure  as 
"an  immemorial  institution"  of  the  natives,  and  disguised  as  "the  mild 
yoke."  See  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  1  :  315.  Both  the  contingent  system 
and  the  culture  system  were  based  on  native  institutions,  but  were  im- 
posed upon  them  from  above,  and  were  more  European  than  native  in 
their  character. 


VII  CULTURE   SYSTEM:    POLICY  251 

will  be  puzzled  to  explain  how  it  was  ever  given  up  in  our 
enlightened  age.  In  a  German  book  on  colonial  policy  he 
will  almost  surely  find  the  culture  system  treated  with 
tender  reverence,  and  with  evident  regret  that  it  has  ceased 
to  exist.  Only  in  Dutch  books,  written  by  those  who 
have  the  most  intimate  acquaintance  with  the  system  in 
its  actual  operation,  will  he  find  it  thoroughly  condemned; 
in  recent  years,  since  the  question  of  forced  culture  has 
been  removed  from  politics,  there  has  been,  so  far  as  I 
know,  not  a  single  voice  raised  in  its  defence. 

It  will  be  the  purpose  of  the  present  chapter  to  show 
that  the  culture  system  does  not  deserve  the  good  repute 
it  has  so  long  enjoyed.  It  will  not  be  amiss,  however,  at 
this  place  to  explain  how  it  has  happened  to  receive  a  con- 
sideration so  generally  favorable.  Almost  all  of  the  eulo- 
gies of  the  culture  system  can  be  traced  back  to  one 
source,  a  book  by  an  English  barrister,  J.  W.  B.  Money, 
which  was  published  at  London  in  1861  under  the  title 
"Java;  or  How  to  manage  a  Colony."  After  four  years' 
residence  in  Calcutta  Money  found  that  his  wife's  health 
required  some  change,  and  selected  Java  for  a  summer's 
trip  in  1858,  "  more  from  hearing  that  it  was  a  beautiful 
island,  with  a  fine  climate,  easy  travelling,  and  an  opera, 
than  with  any  idea  of  acquiring  useful  information  from 
an  examination  of  the  Dutch  colonial  system."  He  did 
not  speak  Dutch  or  any  of  the  native  languages,  and  got 
much  of  the  information  that  he  embodied  in  his  book  on 
shooting  parties  and  similar  excursions,  where  he  associ- 
ated with  officials,  planters,  and  the  Javanese  nobility. 
It  will  appear  later  that  men  of  this  class  had  the  best 
reasons  for  concealing  the  truth  of  affairs  in  Java,  and 
systematically  put  forward  only  the  favorable  features  of 


252  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

the  governing  system  that  they  followed.  Money  had 
left  British  India  in  the  throes  of  the  Sepoy  mutiny, 
when  the  English  seemed  to  be  losing  hold  and  were  faced 
by  a  most  threatening  future.  He  found  in  Java  what  he 
thought  was  a  solution  of  the  Indian  question,  and  devoted 
his  book  to  praising  the  Dutch  system  to  the  disadvantage 
of  everything  British. 

A  measure  of  his  eulogy  can  best  be  given  by  quoting  a 
few  sentences  from  his  introduction.  The  culture  system, 
he  says,  in  twenty-five  years  after  its  introduction,  "  quad- 
rupled the  revenue,  paid  off  the  debt,  changed  the  yearly 
deficit  to  a  large  yearly  surplus,  trebled  the  trade,  improved 
the  administration,  diminished  crime  and  litigation,  gave 
peace,  security,  and  affluence  to  the  people,  combined  the 
interests  of  European  and  native,  and  more  wonderful 
still,  nearly  doubled  an  Oriental  population,  and  gave  con- 
tentment with  the  rule  of  their  foreign  conquerors  to  ten 
millions  of  a  conquered  Mussulman  race.  The  only  Eng- 
lish aim  it  did  not  attain  was,  what  the  Dutch  had  no 
wish  to  secure,  the  religious  and  intellectual  elevation  of 
the  native.  But  these  benefits  were  all  obtained  by  means 
not  only  compatible  with  that  object,  but  which  have 
involuntarily  operated  in  that  direction,  and  have  so  far 
produced  a  firmer  and  more  natural  basis  for  future  im- 
provement than  is  shown  by  any  of  the  results  of  our 
educated  and  missionary  efforts  in  India." 

At  the  time  when  Money's  book  was  published,  the  cul- 
ture system  was  already  losing  ground,  but  its  political 
supporters  in  the  Netherlands  were  fighting  against  all 
change,  and  used  the  book  for  a  party  document.  In 
this  way  it  gained  such  importance  as  to  call  forth  an 
authoritative   refutation    of    its    errors   in   a   ministerial 


VII  CULTURE   SYSTEM:   POLICY  253 

communication  to  the  Second  Chamber.  Though  Money 
asserted  that  he  had  got  his  statistics  from  authoritative 
sources,  investigation  showed  that  in  some  tables  quoted 
by  him  not  a  single  figure  agreed  with  the  ofiicial  records, 
and  the  colonial  department  searched  in  vain  for  the 
source  of  his  statistics.^  His  book  is  totally  unreliable. 
Money's  book  had  a  success  that  accorded  with  the 
extravagance  of  his  statements  and  the  importance  of 
his  subject.  Some  one  in  Jamaica,  v^^here  the  labor  prob- 
lem was  pressing  as  it  always  is  in  the  tropics,  reprinted 
a  part  of  it,  "  as  containing  at  least  some  suggestions  tend- 
ing to  enlarged  views  of  a  policy  that  may  be  applicable 
to  our  condition,  but  has  not  yet  been  recognized." ^    The 

1  T.  J.  Hovell  Tliurlow,  Report  on  Java  and  Dependencies  in  Rep.  of 
H.  M.  Sec.  of  Embassy,  1868,  v,  vi,  Lond.,  1869,  pp.  337,  392.  Compare 
the  criticism  of  the  book  in  Woordenboek  van  Nederlandsch  Indie,  2  :  269, 
where  it  is  called  a  "touched-up  picture"  ;  the  writer  says  that  Money 
got  his  favorable  impressions  of  Java  at  races  and  stag  hunts,  and  would 
have  judged  differently  if  he  had  stayed  longer  and  seen  more.  In  a  Bel- 
gian review  quoted  by  Hoevell  ("  Eene  stem  uit  den  freemde  .  .  .,"  TNI., 
1861,  23  :  2  :  349)  Money's  figures  are  assumed  to  be  accurate,  but  his  con- 
clusions were  "almost  always  wrong."  A  Dutchman  who  spent  many 
years  in  Java,  both  in  an  official  capacity  and  as  a  private  individual,  said 
that  he  could  not  read  Money's  book  through,  it  was  so  full  of  perversion 
and  misstatement.  TNI.,  1873,  2  :  1,  125.  No  one  at  all  conversant  with 
the  actual  conditions  in  Java,  as  they  are  known  to  us  on  unimpeachable 
evidence,  can  retain  the  slightest  respect  for  Money's  authority  after  read- 
ing his  book.  I  began  to  keep  a  catalogue  of  its  errors,  but  found  the  list 
extending  so  far  that  I  gave  up  the  task  as  useless. 

The  name  of  W.  J.  Money  appears  in  a  petition  to  the  government  of 
Java  in  1828  ;  he  was  a  member  of  the  British  Parliament  and  part  owner 
of  estates  in  Java  that  had  been  bought  in  1812,  but  I  know  of  no  connec- 
tion between  him  or  his  successor,  William  Taylor  Money,  and  the  author 
of  the  book.  See  the  "Advice  of  the  Council,"  Dec.  22,  1828,  in  Elout, 
Bijdragen,  1874,  pp.  134,  140. 

2  "  Cultivation  in  Java,  being  an  account  of  the  culture  system  at  present 
pursued  in  that  island  and  its  beneficial  results  ;  extracted  from  Money's 
'Java,  or  How  to  manage  a  Colony,'  with  au  introductory  preface  by 


254  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

United  States  Consul  at  Batavia  commended  to  our  gov- 
ernment, then  engaged  in  the  war  of  secession,  the  book 
describing  a  system  that  had  "blessed  the  island  and 
benefited  the  world";  he  said  (incorrectly)  that  slavery 
had  been  abolished  in  Java  through  the  culture  system, 
and  suggested  that  the  system  might  be  applied  to  the 
emancipated  slaves  of  the  United  States.^  I  am  not  aware 
that  any  attempt  was  made  to  introduce  the  culture  sys- 
tem in  other  parts  of  the  world,  but  the  good  name  that 
Money  gave  the  system  lived  on  even  after  the  system 
was  abolished,  and  has  often  reappeared  in  later  books. ^ 
It  is  not  worth  while  to  linger  over  the  details  of  the 
original  plan  of  Van  den  Bosch,  and  for  this  reason,  that 
elaborations  in  a  plan  of  this  kind  did  not  count,  they 
would  not  be  applied.  "^cA.  man  who  spent  many  years  in 
an  official  position  in  Java  says  that  he  never  saw  a,  prin- 
ciple carried  out  there  ;  all  was  variety,  —  there  was  no 

W.  W.  A.,  shewing  the  suitability  of  the  system  for  this  island."  Kings- 
ton, Jamaica,  preface  dated  Jan.  1,  1862.  A  copy  of  the  book  is  in  the 
Boston  Public  Library. 

1  U.  S.  Commercial  Relations,  1862,  report  of  Diehl,  p.  279  £f. 

2  English  writers  on  the  culture  system  either  follow  Money  implicitly, 
as  Ireland  in  "Tropical  Colonization,"  or  show  his  influence,  as  Miss 
Scidmore  in  her  book  on  "Java"  and  Miss  Kingsley  in  "  West  African 
Studies."  Wallace  concurred  in  the  conclusions  of  Money's  "excellent 
and  interesting  work,"  "  Malay  Archipelago,"  105.  Boys,  "  Some  Notes 
on  Java  and  its  Administration  by  the  Dutch,"  Allahabad,  1892,  is  an 
independent  study  and  is  of  value,  but  neglects  the  work  of  Dutch  his- 
torians and  critics. 

Reference  to  the  works  of  Roscher,  Hasse,  and  Geffcken  will  show  that 
all  those  writers  have  an  unduly  favorable  estimate  of  the  culture  system  ; 
French  writers  are  more  independent.  The  little  book  by  Hough,  "Dutch 
Life  in  Town  and  Country,"  N.Y.,  1901,  p.  271,  says  that  the  culture  sys- 
tem "produced  very  good  results,  especially  in  Java  and  Madura,"  and 
that  the  condition  of  laborers  is  not  so  good  under  individual  planters  as 
it  was  under  government  cultures. 


VII  CULTURE   SYSTEM:    POLICY  255 

uniformity.^  The  customs  and  institutions  of  the  East 
are  too  old  to  be  changed  in  mass  by  the  whims  of  west- 
ern legislators  ;  they  mould  the  laws,  the  laws  do  not 
mould  them.  One  point  at  a  time  can  be  carried,  but 
not  much  more  than  that.  So  in  a  system  of  this  kind 
it  was  certain  that  the  plan  would  not  be  uniformly  car- 
ried out,  that  it  would  be  modified  in  its  details,  and 
would  take  a  different  shape  in  different  places. 

More  important  than  the  scheme  was  the  spirit  in 
which  it  was  applied,  for  it  was  that  which  would  tend 
to  determine  the  actual  working  system,  whatever  the 
logical  paper  system  might  be.  Van  den  Bosch  had  been 
a  leader  in  charitable  enterprises  in  the  Netherlands,  and 
he  brought  forward  the  culture  system  as  a  great  measure 
of  philanthropy,  designed  to  elevate  and  educate  the  na- 
tive population.  His  reports  are  full  of  smooth  phrases 
in  which  he  urges  the  necessity  of  protecting  the  natives 
against  abuses,  and  of  furthering  their  welfare.  "  So 
long,"  he  wrote  in  his  report  of  1834,2  u  .^^  ^g  (jo  not 
regard  and  treat  the  Javanese  as  our  children,  and  do  not 
honestly  fulfil  to  them  all  the  duties  which  rest  upon  us 
as  their  leaders  and  protectors,  our  arrangements  will 
constantly  be  subject  to  shocks,  and  the  aim  that  we 
propose  will  not  be  attained  but  will  lead  constantly  to 
disappointments."  The  history  of  the  system  that  Bosch 
established  was  destined  to  confirm  in  a  striking  way  the 
truth  of  statements  such  as  this,  but  whether  he  put  any 
faith  in  them  at  the  time  can  well  be  doubted.     We  find 

1  Van  Vleuten,  "  Belasting  in  arbeid  en  belasting  in  geld  op  Java," 
De  Gids,  1872,  3  :  21.3. 

2  "  Memorie  van  den  Commissaris-Generaal,"  printed  in  Bijd.  TLV., 
1863,  2:7:  391.  For  statements  of  similar  tone  in  earlier  reports  see  in 
the  documents  in  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  2  :  191,  249,  264,  268,  etc. 


256  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

along  with  them  in  Bosch's  reports  too  many  calculations 
for  the  increase  of  the  government  revenue,  too  many 
references  to  Java  as  a  conquered  province,  too  many 
comparisons  with  the  products  of  the  slave  islands  of  the 
West  Indies,  to  let  us  believe  that  he  had  the  welfare  of 
the  natives  very  seriously  at  heart. 

He  was  put  in  charge  of  Java  for  one  definite  purpose, 
to  make  money  for  the  Dutch  government,  and  even  if  he 
had  been  inclined  to  spare  the  natives  in  reaching  this 
end,  he  would  have  been  prevented  from  doing  so  by  the 
pressure  from  the  Netherlands.  In  the  first  year  of  the 
culture  system  he  increased  the  production  of  export 
products  in  Java  by  3,000,000  gulden,  at  the  expense 
of  personal  exertions  that  seriously  impaired  his  health ; 
but  he  thereby  only  whetted,  did  not  stay,  the  Dutch 
appetite  for  revenue.  When  the  minister  in  the  Nether- 
lands lowered  his  demands  from  8,000,000  to  5,000,000 
gulden  in  1832,  in  response  to  the  Governor's  representa- 
tions, Bosch  on  the  other  hand  had  raised  his  promises 
to  12,000,000,  and  though  he  would  have  been  glad  to 
come  down  to  the  lower  figure  he  was  not  allowed  to  do 
so.i  When  his  successor  as  Governor  General  declared 
in  1834  that  it  would  require  every  exertion  to  remit 
10,000,000  gulden,  Bosch  himself,  then  minister  of  the 
colonies,  sent  back  word  that  18,000,000  should  be  sent 
from  the  crop  of  1836,  and  as  much  more  as  could  possi- 
bly be  obtained. 2  Bosch  wrote  that  the  Governor  in 
India   was   in   no  position   to  know  what    the    interests 

1  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  2  :  350,  529.  Nothing  is  more  striking  in  the 
early  laws  and  reports  of  the  culture  system  than  the  empliasis  laid  on  the 
"pressing  necessity"  of  raising  money  ;  between  the  lines  or  explicitly 
stated  one  reads  everywhere  that  money  must  be  had  at  any  cost.  Cf. 
LS.,  2  :  148,  152,  186,  267,  274,  etc.  2  lS.,  2  :  776. 


VII  CULTURE   SYSTEM:   POLICY  257 

of  the  Netherlands  required  !  In  the  three  years  1836 
to  1838  the  Dutch  government  contracted  debts  of 
236,000,000  florins  on  the  security  of  the  Indian  rev- 
enues ;  ^  and  the  need  of  meeting  interest  payments  pre- 
vented thought  of  any  abatement  in  the  demands  on 
Java.  Only  one  strong  motive  underlay  the  foundation 
and  the  maintenance  of  the  culture  system,  the  desire  to 
obtain  revenue  for  the  Dutch  treasury.  <Pious  hopes  of 
benefiting  the  natives  which  may  have  been  at  first  sin- 
cere could  be  only  hypocritical  after  a  few  years'  expe- 
rience with  the  workings  of  the  system,  and  at  any  rate 
never  interfered  materially  with  its  development.  This 
fact  must  never  be  lost  from  mind  in  judging  the  culture 
system  ;  the  spirit  of  the  government  pervaded  the  system 
and  made  it  much  worse  than  such  a  system  needed  to  be. 
To  understand  the  culture  system  it  is  necessary  to  re- 
move the  mask  which  it  wore  from  the  beginning  and  to 
see  it  in  its  nakedness.  All  of  the  features  in  the  original 
plan  which  interfered  with  the  yield  of  revenue  were  given 
up  almost  from  the  start.  Bosch  at  times  attempted  to  give 
his  system  the  air  of  being  based  on  freedom  instead  of 
force,  and  indeed,  if  it  promised  the  natives  such  advan- 
tages as  he  asserted,  there  seems  little  reason  for  compel- 
ling them  to  accept  it.  The  indigo  and  sugar  cultures 
were,  in  form,  carried  on  at  first  by  contracts  with  free 
laborers,  but  even  the  appearance  of  freedom  was  soon  re- 
nounced.^     Bosch  had  at  first  proposed  to  take  only  one- 

i  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  3  :  42. 

2  As  early  as  August,  1831,  Bosch  speaks  of  natives  cultivating  indigo 
and  sugar  "by  agreement  or  by  appointment  (designatie)  "  ;  vrith  insig- 
nificant exceptions  all  the  cultures  were  forced  from  the  start.  Merkus, 
Nota,  February,  1831,  showed  tliat  the  people  did  not  know  the  difference 
between  contract  and  command,  and  that  "agreements"   between  the 


258  THE  DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

fifth  of  the  land  for  cultures,  according  to  what  he  said 
was  a  "native  custom."  In  July,  1830,  he  stated  that  to 
be  a  proper  proportion  ;^n  August  of  the  same  year  he 
said  he  was  convinced  that  there  would  be  no  dilficulty  in 
taking  one-third,^  and  in  fact  he  took  whatever  amount  he 
pleased,  even  to  one-half  or  the  whole.  While  according 
to  the  original  theory  the  people  were  to  give  the  govern- 
ment only  about  one-fifth  of  their  working  time,  it  will 
appear  from  evidence  that  I  shall  quote  later  that  there 
was  no  limit  to  demands  upon  them.  Bosch  proposed  that 
the  government  should  bear  the  losses  from  bad  harvests  ; 
this  was  not  carried  into  effect.  By  giving  up  land  and 
services  to  the  government  cultures  the  people  were  sup- 
posed to  be  freed  from  the  land-tax  ;  in  many  cases  they 
had  to  bear  the  cultures  and  pay  the  land-tax  in  addition. ^ 
During  the  period  of  its  operation  the  culture  system 
was  applied  to  the  cultivation  of  a  long  list  of  products. 
The  government  experimented  with  coffee,  sugar,  indigo, 
tea,  tobacco,  cinnamon,  cochineal,  pepper,  silk,  cotton,  etc., 
and  dropped  from  the  list  the  products  which  after  an  ex- 
tended trial  gave  no  promise  of  returning  a  profit  to  itself. 

government  and  the  natives  existed  only  in  name.  S.  van  Deventer,  LS., 
2  :  221.  Baud,  in  1834,  recognized  the  existence  of  abuses  and  oppression 
when  there  had  been  a  departure  from  the  "  fixed  principles,"  i&.,  2  :  611. 
There  was  no  "fixed"  principle  but  government  profit. 

1  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  2  :  157. 

2  For  these  and  other  differences  between  the  theory  and  the  practice 
of  the  culture  system  see  Vitalis,  "  Misbruiken  in  de  administratie  op 
Java,"  TNL,  1851,  13  :  2  :  248  ff. ;  Van  Soest,  KS.,  3  :  165  ff.,  Veth,  2  :  411; 
Pierson,  88  ff.  Van  Soest  says  (2  :  192)  that  at  the  very  time  when  the 
cultures  were  introduced,  existing  taxes  on  articles  of  consumption  were 
raised  and  new  taxes  established.  There  were,  it  is  true,  a  number  of 
attempts  to  correct  abuses;  cf.  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  2:410,  646,  701, 
704.  These  touched,  however,  only  minor  details  in  the  operations  of  the 
system  and  did  not  reach  the  real  sources  of  evils. 


VII  CULTURE  SYSTEM:   POLICY  259 

From  the  fiscal  standpoint,  coffee,  sugar,  and  indigo  were 
the  only  products  that  ever  attained  importance.  The  sys- 
tem was  put  in  force  in  different  islands  of  the  archipelago, 
in  northern  Celebes,  on  the  west  coast  of  Sumatra,  and  in 
Java,  but  Java  was  always  the  chief  field  of  its  operation. 
Even  in  Java,  however,  the  system  was  applied  only  par- 
tially. The  "  particular  "  lands,  which  had  been  sold  by 
the  government  in  full  property  to  individuals,  and  the 
two  protected  principalities,  were  free  from  its  operations. 
The  districts  where  the  forced  delivery  of  products  had 
never  been  abolished,  even  under  the  liberal  rule  of  Raffles 
and  his  successors,  were  naturally  included  in  the  field  of 
the  new  system,  and  it  was  extended  over  other  places 
where  conditions  seemed  to  favor  the  growth  of  export 
products.  The  government  experimented  with  places  as 
it  did  with  crops.  It  should  be  noted,  however,  that  the 
system  never  affected  all  the  population  even  of  the  dis- 
tricts where  it  was  introduced  ;  in  the  period  from  1840  to 
1850,  when  it  reached  its  greatest  extension,  it  occupied 
still  but  a  small  proportion  of  the  total  area.^ 

Before  proceeding  to  a  discussion  and  criticism  in  detail 
of  the  workings  of  the  culture  system,  it  will  be  proper  to 
notice  here  the  chief  economic  flaw  in  the  theory  of  its  ad- 
vocates. Money,  if  we  may  take  him  as  their  spokesman, 
says  :  ^  "  Where,  as  in  India,  the  capital  and  the  land  are  in 
the  possession  of  the  conquered  native,  and  the  intelligence 
alone  belongs  to  the  conquering  European,  the  ordinary 

1  In  1839  about  eight  hundred  thousand  families  were  subject  to  it, 
more  than  half  of  the  population  of  the  districts  in  which  the  system  had 
been  introduced.  In  1845  the  cultures  occupied  about  5.5%  of  the  total 
cleared  land  (Van  Soest,  3  :  167),  in  1854-57  about  3.2  %  of  the  total  agri- 
cultural land  of  the  native  population.     Woordenboek,  1 :  647. 

2  Java,  1 :  313. 


260  THE  DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

motives  of  men  prevent  the  combination  of  intelligence 
and  capital  to  the  improvement  of  the  soil.  On  the  other 
hand,  when  native  labor  is  directed  by  European  intelli- 
gence and  assisted  by  the  capital  which  in  Eastern  coun- 
tries only  European  governments  have  both  sufficient 
credit  to  command  and  sufficient  knowledge  to  apply,  the 
result  is  equally  beneficial  to  all  the  parties  to  its  produc- 
tion." If  any  government  has  a  sufficient  knowledge  and 
intelligence  to  know  an  individual's  business  better  than 
lie  himself  knows  it,  the  conclusion  of  Money's  statement 
holds  true.  We  must,  however,  substitute  the  word  igno- 
rance for  the  words  knowledge  and  intelligence  in  Money's 
theorem,  and  the  conclusion  becomes  quite  a  different  one. 
In  putting  the  culture  system  in  operation  the  govern- 
ment had  necessarily  to  proceed  on  a  general,  more  or  less 
abstract,  plan.  In  assuming  the  responsibility  of  produc- 
tion, it  centralized  the  management  of  it  and  treated  the 
country  almost  as  though  it  were  a  gigantic  checker-board 
to  be  laid  out  in  squares  of  tea,  coffee,  sugar,  indigo,  and 
pepper.  Van  den  Bosch  himself  realized  that  the  experi- 
ence to  be  gathered  from  the  history  of  the  crops  which  were 
already  grown  in  Java  was  insufficient  to  guide  the  gov- 
ernment in  extending  their  cultivation  ;  and  in  directing 
the  planting  of  new  and  untried  crops  the  government  was 
thrown  entirely  on  its  own  resources.  For  the  individual 
planter  was  substituted  a  government  clerk,  an  office 
farmer,  whose  real  business  had  to  do  with  red-tape  and 
not  with  agriculture.  Everything  was  to  be  stretched  to 
fit  a  Procrustean  plan.  In  1832  each  residency  was  re- 
quired to  furnish  a  quota  of  products  in  direct  proportion 
to  the  estimated  population. ^  This  demand  was  never 
1  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  2  :  680. 


vii  CULTURE   SYSTEM:   POLICY  261 

repeated,  but  the  method  that  it  illustrates  remained  the 
same.  The  natives  were  made  to  plant  crops  where  the 
conditions  of  soil,  climate,  or  altitude  made  their  success 
impossible;  they  were  given  a  task  incapable  of  accom- 
plishment, and  were  kept  at  it  long  after  its  hopelessness 
should  have  been  apparent.  And  of  the  many  slips  of 
government  calculations,  resulting  in  failure  of  the  crops, 
the  natives  bore  the  loss;  it  needed  but  a  few  years  of 
experience  to  prove  that  the  government  could  secure  no 
profit  if  it  were  made  responsible  for  its  own  mistakes. 

A  quotation  from  a  report  made  by  the  Governor  Gen- 
eral in  1834,  after  a  journey  of  inspection,  will  suggest 
the  evils  that  were  a  necessary  corollary  of  the  culture 
system. 1  "The  sugar  culture  was  accompanied  by  a  suc- 
cession of  disappointments,  caused  chiefly  by  lack  of 
knowledge,  a  poor  organization  of  labor,  and  an  injudi- 
cious selection  of  the  location  for  the  main  sugar  factory. 
This  factory  had  at  hand  neither  a  sufficient  extent  of 
good  land  nor  woods  for  the  supply  of  fuel ;  no  roads 
were  laid  out  through  the  sugar-fields,  and  the  cane  had 
to  be  carried  to  the  mill  by  the  laborers  themselves.  The 
results  were  losses  for  the  manufacturer  and  pressing 
hardships  for  the  cultivators." 

This  quotation  really  sums  up  the  history  of  the  cul- 
ture system,  but  the  subject  is  so  important  and  the 
material  for  its  illustration  is  so  abundant  that  I  shall 
proceed  to  discuss  it  in  some  detail.  I  shall  take  up 
first  the  different  crops  that  were  tried  and  show  how 
generally  the  attempt  to  cultivate  them  failed,  and  how 
heavily  the   failures  bore  on   the  natives.     In  the  cases 

1  Rapport,  Aug.  23,  1834,  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  2:  634.  This  extract 
describes  conditions  in  the  residency  of  Tagal. 


262  THE   DUTCH   IN   JAVA  chap. 

where  cultures  survived  the  period  of  experiment,  it  will 
be  necessary  to  note  at  what  sacrifices  to  the  natives  this 
result  was  achieved.  Another  topic,  and  the  last  in  the 
purely  economic  criticism  of  the  culture  system,  will  be 
the  effect  of  the  system  on  the  quality  of  the  product 
furnished. 

The  experiments  in  the  introduction  of  new  crops  were 
sometimes  made  on  such  a  small  scale  or  under  such  con- 
ditions that  the  natives  were  not  seriously  affected  by 
them.i  Ordinarily,  however,  the  government  would  re- 
quire the  natives  of  a  certain  district  to  give  up  part  of 
their  land  and  labor  to  the  cultivation  of  some  new  crop, 
and  make  them  dependent  on  the  success  of  the  venture 
for  any  remuneration.  In  1834  a  report  stated  that 
experiments  were  being  made  in  a  number  of  different 
places  on  the  cultivation  of  tea,  but  that  up  to  that  time 
they  had  given  but  slight  results  ;  in  1841  the  culture 
was  still  being  carried  on,  but  with  loss  to  the  natives  and 
no  important  returns  to  the  government. ^  Silk  culture 
appeared  to  have  no  prospect  of  success  from  experiments 
so  far  as  they  had  been  carried  in  1834,  but  the  govern- 
ment decided  in  that  year  to  make  the  natives  assume  the 
cultivation  of  the  mulberry  groves,  and  to  pay  them  only 
in  proportion  to  the  silk  product  they  returned.^  The 
cinnamon  culture  was  established  by  forcing  the  natives 

1  Experiments  on  cotton  culture  were  made  usually  in  the  yards  of 
government  or  native  officials,  and  some  crops  were  tested  in  the  Botanic 
Garden  at  Buitenzorg.     S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  2  :  744,  745. 

2  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  2  :  626  ;  3 :  124.  In  1841  it  was  stated  that  the 
one  hundred  thousand  tea  bushes  in  Japara  yielded  bad  results  constantly  ; 
that  the  families  engaged  in  the  culture  worked  hard  and  got  little,  and 
that  ten  out  of  fifty  of  them  had  fled.  Evidently  a  government  order  of 
18.34  (lb.,  2  :  737)  that  tea  experiments  should  be  conducted  by  free  hired 
labor  was  not  carried  out.  ^  Ibid.,  2  :  627,  738. 


VII  CULTURE   SYSTEM:    POLICY  263 

to  work  for  pitifully  small  wages ;  it  was  maintained  for 
over  twenty  years,  though  Money  was  told  that  it  paid  so 
badly  that  no  private  planter  thought  of  going  into  it.^ 
The  case  was  the  same  with  other  cultures  that  disappear 
finally  from  the  scene  with  only  a  long  record  of  failures 
behind  them.  The  government  itself  lost  money  on  the 
experiments  ;  the  natives  were  always  victims. ^ 

Even  the  crops  that  formed  the  main  stay  of  the  cul- 
ture system  in  the  later  period  secured  their  position 
only  at  the  cost  of  a  great  number  of  failures.  In  tlie 
case  of  coffee  these  failures,  though  very  numerous,  were 
not  so  serious,  as  this  crop  was  grown  ordinarily  on  land 
that  had  not  been  used  before  by  the  natives.  Sugar  and 
indigo,  on  the  other  hand,  displaced  native  food  crops, 
and  therefore  imperilled  even  the  existence  of  the  people 
when  the  ventures  in  them  turned  out  ill.  In  a  number 
of  districts  the  attempts  to  introduce  sugar  culture  failed 
completely.^  Sugar  was  planted  and  manufactured  by 
the  natives  in  some  parts  of  Java,  without  any  govern- 

1  ^.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  2  :  741 ;  Money,  1  :  44,  172.  Money  says  that 
the  government  maintained  it  for  the  pleasure  of  paying  the  natives  high 
wages  at  a  loss  to  itself ;  even  if  he  told  the  truth  in  other  points,  it  would 
be  hard  to  believe  him  on  this  one. 

2  Further  details  on  the  minor  cultures  (tobacco,  pepper,  etc.)  could  be 
gleaned  from  Van  Soest  and  the  documents  in  S.  van  Deventer,  LS. 

8  See  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  2  :  696  ff.,  and  the  report  of  Baud's  inspec- 
tion of  1834.  Baud  found  that  the  natives  were  heavy  losers  by  the  gov- 
ernment sugar  ventures,  and  urged  a  reform  in  the  system  of  payment,  but 
I  have  seen  no  evidence  that  it  was  carried  out.  lb.,  2  :  680,  654,  670. 
"If  the  crop  does  not  come  to  maturity,  or  is  burned  or  washed  away 
before  the  canes  are  ripe,  and  thei'efore  before  the  estimation  of  the  yield, 
the  peasants  get  nothing  for  their  labor.  Self-interest  thus  teaches  them 
to  use  care  and  caution  to  provide  against  accidents."  Money,  Java, 
1 :  116.  Self-interest  would  teach  the  native  to  run  away  from  a  govern- 
ment which  forced  him  to  plant  sugar  under  such  conditions  that  it  was 
likely  to  fail  from  the  start. 


2d4  THE  DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

ment  intervention  and  with  entire  success,^  but  the 
government  failed  when  natives  succeeded,  for  reasons 
suggested  in  a  quotation  above.  Indigo  Avas  a  crop  in 
which  the  proportion  of  faihires  to  successes  was  even 
more  marked.  When  Baud  made  his  journey  of  inspec- 
tion in  1834,  he  found  that  the  requisite  conditions  of 
success  in  the  indigo  culture  had  been  so  generally  disre- 
garded that  it  was  necessary  to  reorganize  the  whole  in- 
dustry.^  The  failure  was  due  often  to  injudicious  selection 
of  land,  sometimes  to  mere  administrative  carelessness. 
In  1831  thousands  of  men  were  called  out  in  a  certain 
district  to  prepare  the  land  for  the  cultivation  of  indigo. 
When  the  work  was  done  the  plants  were  lacking,  and  it 
was  not  until  two  months  later,  when  the  ground  was 
rank  with  weeds,  that  indigo  seed  was  received  from 
Batavia,  and  the  people   had  then  to  do  the  work  over 


asfam. 


Outright  failures  in  the  attempt  to  force  the  cultiva- 
tion of  crops  on  the  natives  might  be  expected  at  the  in- 
troduction of  the  system,  and  of  course  were  most  marked 
in  its  early  stages.  At  no  period  in  its  history  were  they 
entirely  lacking ;  they  attended  every  extension  of  a  cul- 
ture, and  appeared  in  old-established  cultures  when  the 
land  had  been  exhausted  from  the  drain  on  its  resources 
of  crops  like  indigo  and  tobacco.  Failure,  however,  is  a 
limit;  many  may  approach  it  when  few  are  actually 
pressed  to  it. 

1  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  2 :  653. 

2  In  one  residency  he  advised  the  abandonment  of  every  indigo  factory  ; 
in  another,  eight  ovit  of  seventeen  large  factories  had  already  been  aban- 
doned, and  four  more  vrould  soon  follow  ;  similar  conditions  existed  in  the 
other  residencies.    Cf.  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  2  :  624,  629,  636,  640. 

8  VanSoest,  KS.,  2  :  129. 


VII  CULTURE   SYSTEM  :   POLICY  266 

A  striking  feature  of  the  culture  system  as  it  was  ad- 
ministered in  Java  was  its  injustice  as  a  means  of  raising 
government  revenue ;  it  distributed  burdens  so  unequally 
that  it  pressed  many  of  the  inhabitants  to  the  verge  of 
failure,  while  it  bore  lightly  on  others  and  left  some 
entirely  untouched.  It  is  not  necessary  to  defend  here 
"  equality  of  sacrifice  "  as  a  proper  principle  of  taxation  ; 
whatever  position  one  may  take  toward  that  principle,  one 
will  not  defend  such  inequality  of  sacrifice  as  marked  the 
application  of  the  culture  system. 

.rin  the  first  place,  there  was  the  distinction  between  the 
people  subject  to  ordinary  taxes  and  those  subject  to  the 
culture  system.  It  is  estimated  that  the  sugar  culture 
demanded  more  than  twice  the  labor  required  by  rice- 
fields  subject  to  the  old  land-tax.^  Then  there  was  no 
uniformity  inside  the  spheres  of  the  culture  system ; 
local  officials  imposed  demands  as  they  pleased,  without 
regard  to  general  principles. ^  Some  natives  had  only  one 
culture  to  provide  for;  others  had  two  or  even  more.^ 
Different  cultures  bore  on  the  people  with  very  unequal 
weight.  The  indigo  culture  was  especially  oppressive, 
requiring  an  immense  amount  of  care  and  labor;  and 
natives  in  the  indigo  districts  migrated  to  other  sections 
where  only  coffee  and  sugar  were  cultivated.* 

Moreover,  within  each  culture  there  were  such  differ- 

1  Piccardt,  CS.,  83. 

2  See  for  proofs  of  this  S.  van  Deventer,  LS. ,  2  :  678,  636.  It  is  intelli- 
gible enough  in  view  of  the  history  of  the  land-tax. 

8  Van  Soest,  KS.,  3:  171. 

*  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  3  :  83,  Report  of  1839.  Baud  found  in  1834 
that  the  coffee  culture  had  indirectly  been  stimulated  by  that  of  indigo  ; 
the  village  head-men  cultivated  coffee  "  with  remarkable  energy  "  for  fear 
that  else  they  would  have  to  cultivate  indigo  ;  ib.,  2  :  625. 


266 


THE   DUTCH   IN   JAVA 


CHAP. 


ences  in  the  equation  of  government  demands  and  native 
ability  to  meet  them  that  some  natives  could  be  compara- 
tively well  off  while  others,  occupied  in  the  same  culture, 
were  almost  destitute.  To  take  a  statistical  example  the 
amount  received  by  a  family  planting  indigo  was  as  fol- 
lows, in  the  residencies  and  years  named :  ^  — 


ClIEEIBON 

Pekalongan 

Bezoeki 

1854 

1855 

1856 

1857 

fl.  8.40 
4.83 
7.40 
6.96 

fl.  4.35 
2.30 
5.05 
2.94 

fl.  13.80 
7.39 
8.98 

8.81 

Average 

6.90 

3.66 

9.74 

The  yield  of  sugar  per  unit  of  area  was  as  follows,  in 
1833,  in  different  residencies :  6,  86,  28,  14,  7,  24,  8,  36, 
64,  48.2  The  differences  were  as  great  in  the  coffee 
culture. 3  The  government  took  small  account  of  the 
variation  in  the  fertility  of  land  and  its  fitness  for  dif- 
ferent crops.  If  coffee  would  not  yield  well  where  the 
government  ordered  it  planted,  so  much  the  worse  for  the 


1  Woordenboek  NX. ,  1  :  525.  I  have  omitted  fractions.  The  propor- 
tion of  families  to  the  area  planted  varied  about  as  widely  and  with  no 
apparent  justification  ;  of.  ib.,  p.  524. 

2  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  3 :  2. 

8  While  a  family  in  Japara  was  required  to  maintain  282  coffee  trees,  a 
family  in  Cheribon  had  to  maintain  1184.  Woordenboek  NL,  2:  177. 
Statistics  from  the  same  source  (ib.,  1 :  666)  show  that  in  1854-1857  more 
than  half  the  residencies  did  not  reach  the  per  capita  average  in  the  coffee 
crop  of  2.11  pikols,  and  of  these  five  were  under  1  pikol.  See  Pierson,  KP., 
138,  for  a  table  of  the  amount  received  by  a  family  for  coffee  in  different 
residencies,  in  the  best  year,  the  worst,  and  the  average  in  the  period  1853- 
1864. 


vn  CULTURE   SYSTEM:   POLICY  267 

native  planter.  The  government  at  first  paid  different 
prices  for  a  product,  according  to  the  place,  but,  as  Bosch's 
successor  said,i  it  seemed  "  questionable,  from  a  financial 
standpoint,"  to  pay  7.50  florins  for  what  was  being 
bought  in  another  place  for  3  florins,  and  the  tendency- 
was  toward  a  uniform  price,  approaching  the  minimum. 
The  government,  like  the  old  East  India  Company, 
lowered  the  return  it  gave  for  products  when  prices  fell 
in  the  Netherlands,  without  regard  to  the  needs  of  the 
cultivator. 2 

When  differences  such  as  those  described  existed  in  the 
returns  the  natives  received  from  the  government,  it  is 
apparent  that  general  averages  are  not  fitted  to  picture 
the  actual  condition  of  affairs.  Averages  would  mask 
the  considerable  number  of  people  who  received  very 
little,  and  in  some  cases  almost  nothing,  for  the  use  of 
their  land  and  labor.  A  class  of  this  kind  is  far  more 
important  than  its  mere  numbers  would  indicate.  The 
State  can  afford  to  have  all  its  subjects  poor,  but  it  can 
afford  to  have  very  few  ruined ;  no  amount  of  prosperity 
among  some  classes  will  make  up  for  absolute  destitution 
among  others.  Now  the  existence  of  a  class  of  this  kind 
can  be  proved  for  every  period  of  the  culture  system 
down  to  its  reform,  and  indeed  seems  a  necessary  charac- 
teristic of  the  system.^ 

While  the  government  gained  during  a  certain  period  by 
the  culture  system,  it  gained  only  by  appropriating  practi- 


1  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  2  :  626. 

2  Piccardt,  KS.,  114 ;  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  3  :  188  ff.     Absolute  uni- 
formity in  the  payment  for  crops  seems  never  to  have  been  reached. 

8  To  substantiate  the  point  I  would  refer  to  the  many  instances  collected 
in  the  different  volumes  of  Van  Soest,  KS. 


268  THE   DUTCH   IN  JAVA  chap. 

cally  all  the  profits,  and  by  making  the  natives  bear  prac- 
tically all  the  losses.  It  could  never  have  obtained  its 
surplus  if  it  had  paid  the  natives  a  "living  wage."  The 
system  of  piece-wage  identified  the  native  with  the  success 
or  failure  of  the  crop  that  he  cultivated,  and  all  depended 
with  him  whether  the  seed  fell  on  good  ground  or  bad. 
Some  fell  on  good  ground  and  prospered.  In  Pasoeroean 
the  yields  were  so  large  that  the  cultivator  could  use  the 
government  pay  to  hire  laborers,  and  after  paying  them 
fair  wages  he  had  a  profit  left  for  himself.  That,  how- 
ever, is  no  vindication  of  the  system.  The  system  re- 
quired that  the  cultures  should  be  extended  over  land  of 
average  fertility,  and  on  such  land  the  yields  could  never 
in  the  long  run  pay  government  expenses  and  govern- 
ment profit  and  leave  enough  over  to  maintain  all  the 
laborers  in  a  proper  condition  of  efficiency. 

Besides  the  danger  of  taking  a  general  average  to  in- 
dicate the  condition  of  the  Javanese  under  the  culture 
system,  there  is  further  a  difficulty,  amounting  almost  to 
impossibility,  of  securing  an  average  accurate  enough  to 
be  acceptable.  We  should  want  to  know  what  the 
average  native  received  from  the  government,  what  he 
gave  in  the  form  of  his  land  and  labor,  and  what  exemp- 
tions from  other  taxes  his  subjection  to  the  culture 
system  secured  him.  The  elements  in  this  problem  are 
too  many  and  too  difficult  of  ascertainment  for  a  satis- 
factory solution.  If  a  recent  writer  ^  says  that  under  the 
culture  system  the  native  was  assured  a  wage  about  equal 
to  that  which  he  could  get  in  any  employment  where 
European  competition  had  not  raised  it,  I  am  forced  to 

1  Anton,  "  Neuere  Agrarpolitik  der  Hollander  auf  Java,"  in  Schmol- 
ler's  Jahrbuch  fur  Gesetzgebung,  1899,  23  :  1341. 


VII  CULTURE   SYSTEM:   POLICY  269 

believe  that  he  relies  for  his  authority  upon  the  statement 
of  some  panegyrist  of  the  culture  system,  and  is  not  con- 
versant with  the  facts  of  its  operation.  It  is  difficult  to 
ascertain  even  the  amount  that  the  government  paid  out 
to  the  natives. 

The  government  asserted  that  it  paid  large  sums,  but 
on  critical  examination  these  have  to  be  cut  down  con- 
siderably. ^  During  much  of  the  period  the  government 
paid  the  natives  in  debased  copper  currency. ^  The 
native  was  not  sure  of  getting  even  what  the  govern- 
ment meant  him  to  have.^  If  we  accept,  however,  the 
figures  given  by  one  of  the  best  historians  of  the  culture 
system,^  as  indicating  the  average  reward  of  a  family 
engaged  in  cultures,  ranging  from  ten  to  twenty  gulden 
for  the  most  important  crops,  we  have  made  no  great 
practical  progress.  The  amount  of  land  taken  differed 
widely  in  different  times  and  places,  and  was  often  un- 
known to  the  European  officials.  The  amount  of  labor 
given  was  no  more  definite.  It  would  be  fatally  mis- 
leading to  rely  upon  the  statements  of  Van  den  Bosch  as 
to  what  proportion  of  land  and  labor  he  meant  to  take ; 
every  bit  of  later  evidence  shows  that  his  plans  were  dis- 

1  Cf.  Van  Soest,  KS.,  3  :  78.  Baud's  figures  of  fl.  20,000,000  paid  to 
natives  are  reduced  to  about  12,000,000. 

2  Cf.  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  2  :  729 ;  Money,  1  :  127. 

8  Cf.  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  3  :  85,  Report  of  1837.  The  natives  subject 
to  a  sugar  factory  were  fl.  59,000  in  arrears.  Investigation  showed  that 
they  had  been  dishonestly  treated  from  the  beginning,  and  that  if  they  had 
been  properly  paid  their  arrears  would  have  been  only  fl.  22,000.  Natives 
engaged  in  the  sugar  culture  had  to  wait  eighteen  months  before  receiving 
remuneration  for  their  labor ;  meanwhile  they  lived  on  money  borrowed 
at  the  rate  of  240%  a  year.  "Jets  over  de  misbruiken  van  inlandsche 
hoofden  op  Java,"  TNI.,  1854,  16  :  1  :  36.  Other  abuses  in  payment  are 
described  there.  *  Van  Soest,  KS.,  3  :  167. 


270  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

regarded  from  the  beginning.  If  we  accept  as  fair  an 
estimate  by  a  later  authority  that  the  coffee  culture  must 
have  required  on  the  average  at  least  ninety  days  of  labor 
from  the  native/  we  can  be  sure  that  the  other  cultures 
required  in  general  more  than  that.  It  would  not  be 
difficult  to  find  numerous  examples  of  this  amount  of 
time  being  exceeded  even  in  the  coffee  culture  ;  I  cite 
only  one  case  from  a  report  of  1835,  in  which  it  appears 
that  the  natives  gave  up  in  coffee  culture  and  other  ser- 
vices 225  days  in  the  year,  for  a  remuneration  of  less  than 
five  cents  (Dutch  copper)  a  day.^ 

Assuming  that  it  were  possible  to  ascertain  the  amount 
of  pay  received  and  the  amount  of  land  and  labor  given 
by  the  average  family,  there  is  still  the  question  of  how 
the  culture  system  affected  the  native  in  other  ways, 
especially  how  far  it  secured  him  exemption  from  other 
taxes.  That  question  is  one  whose  difficulty  will  be 
apparent  when  I  take  it  up  a  little  later.  It  would  not 
be  going  far  wrong,  I  believe,  to  set  off  against  the  benefit 
of  possible  exemptions  the  increase  in  other  burdens  (^e.g. 
heerendiensten)  attending  the  operation  of  the  system  ;  if 
that  be  done,  my  impression  is  that  the  natives,  even  tak- 
ing the  average,  were  very  far  from  getting  "  fair  wages  " 
under  the  culture  system.^ 

1  Woordenboek,  1  :  661.  ^  g.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  2  :  726. 

8  This  impression  is  confirmed  by  what  figures  I  have  seen,  giving  the 
sums  (copper)  which  the  government  paid  forced  labor  by  the  day.  Cf. 
S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  2  :  p.  432, 18.31,  10  cents  for  transport ;  p.  605,  1834, 
8  cents  for  transportation  of  timber  ;  p.  766  (1835),  15  cents  for  work  on 
Samarang  fortifications.  For  comparison  with  these  figures  it  may  be 
stated  that  the  proper  average  pay  for  free  labor  in  Java  at  this  period  is 
estimated  at  about  25  cents  a  day  (Dutch).  (Woordenboek,  1  :  661  ; 
Report  of  H.  M.  Sec.  of  Embassy,  Loud.,  1863,  vi.  143.)  Gelpke  esti- 
mated the  income  of  the  average  family  in  Java  at  fl.  150  a  year.     (Kock, 


Til  CULTURE   SYSTEM:   POLICY  271 

Another  factor  in  the  condition  of  natives  under  the 
culture  system  which  eludes  statistical  inquiry  is  the  hard- 
ship imposed  on  them  of  bringing  their  labor  or  the 
products  of  their  land  to  the  place  appointed  by  the 
government.  In  attempting  to  establish  a  new  system  of 
production  at  a  stroke,  instead  of  waiting  for  it  to  develop 
naturally,  the  government  found  factors  of  production 
which  were  not  so  easily  coerced  by  orders  andTegulations 
as  the  native  labor  supply.  Under  the  simple  organization 
of  society  in  Java  there  had  been  but  little  trade  or  inter- 
communication, the  roads  had  remained  of  a  very  primi- 
tive kind,  and  the  population  lived  dispersed  in  small 
groups.  The  government  experienced  great  difficulty  in 
getting  products  from  one  part  of  the  country  to  another, 
but  the  loss  that  fell  upon  it  in  this  way  was  trifling  in 
comparison  Avith  the  sacrifices  imposed  upon  the  natives 
by  the  fiction  of  treating  them  as  suited  to  a  higher  organ- 
ization of  industry  than  the  one  which  they  had  attained. 
Considerations  of  economy  led  the  government  to  estab- 
lish as  few  warehouses  and  factories  as  possible,  and  conse- 
quently a  large  district  was  tributary  to  each  one.  Bosch 
proposed  in  1830  that  the  supply  of  sugar  cane  should  be 
drawn  onl}^  from  a  "  moderate  "  distance  of  about  seven 
miles.  1  Even  when  the  estimated  distance  was  not 
exceeded,  the  compensation  that  the  government  offered 
for  the   transport   of   products   was   far   from   adequate. 

Twee  Stelsels,  De  Gids,  1888,  2:469.)  The  Javanese,  speaking  of  the 
government  reward  for  cultures  used  to  say,  "  It  is  so  light  that  the  wind 
blows  it  away."  For  examples  of  low  pay  in  a  comparatively  late  period 
of  the  culture  system,  see  TNI.,  1873,  2:1:  133. 

1  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  2  :  161.  The  ordinary  measure  of  distance  in 
the  Dutch  reports  of  this  period  is  the  paal,  which  was  twenty  minutes' 
walk  or  about  one  marine  mile.     Cf.  Encyc.  NI.,  2  :  472,  Article  Maten. 


272  THE   DUTCH   IN  JAVA  chap. 

Baud  was  forced,  to  recognize  on  his  journey  of  inspection 
that  while  the  sum  of  fifty  cents,  which  the  government 
had  set  as  proper  pay  for  the  carriage  of  cane  sufficient  to 
make  a  pikol  (133  pounds)  of  sugar,  might  be  considered 
just  if  applied  to  organized  transportation  on  a  large 
scale,  it  was  a  very  small  return  for  the  five  or  six  trips 
of  an  individual  native,  who  might  have  no  proper  means 
of  carriage.  1  When  exhausted  fields  went  out  of  cultiva- 
tion, in  the  sugar  and  indigo  cultures,  the  original  dis- 
tances were  greatly  exceeded.  In  the  case  of  two  indigo 
factories  half  of  the  natives  had  to  bring  their  products  a 
distance  of  thirty  miles  or  more ;  in  the  case  of  another, 
some  natives  came  from  a  distance  of  eighty  miles. ^  To 
remedy  the  scattering  of  the  sugar-fields,  at  one  time,  all 
land  near  the  sugar  factory  was  taken  for  cane,  and  rice- 
fields  were  assigned  in  the  outlying  cane-fields.  Cane 
did  not  have  to  be  carried  so  far,  but  of  the  natives 
attached  to  the  factory  some  had  to  walk  to  their  work 
and  back  again  at  night,  a  distance  of  many  leagues,  while 
in  many  cases  they  were  forced  to  a  like  journey  to  reach 
their  new  rice-fields.  As  late  as  1866  it  was  found  that 
an  order  that  all  coffee  plantations  at  a  greater  distance 
than  eighty  minutes'  walk  from  the  dwellings  of  the 
natives   should   be   forbidden,  could   not   be  carried  out 

1  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  2  :  628.  In  1835  investigation  showed  that  in 
the  Preanger  regencies  natives  in  the  coffee  culture,  who  were  forced  to 
keep  carts  and  buffaloes  to  transport  their  coffee  to  the  government  ware- 
houses, were  forced  in  some  cases  to  make  a  trip  of  about  sixty  miles 
each  way,  consuming  three  weeks  and  bringing  a  reward  of  only  fl.  10 
copper.  For  the  low  pay  of  natives  in  transporting  sugar  cane  at  a  con- 
siderably later  period,  see  TNI.,  1854,  16  : 1 :  37. 

2  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  2:  624,  710.  In  the  original  the  distances  are 
given  as  thirty  paleti  and  seventy -seven  palen  ;  possibly  twenty  minutes' 
walk  did  not  mean  as  much  then  as  now. 


VII  CULTURE  SYSTEM:   POLICY  273 

without  seriously  impairing  the  production  of  coffee,  and 
it  was  repealed  in  less  than  a  year.^ 

Enough  has  been  said  to  show  that  in  spite  of  any 
promises  of  the  founder  of  the  culture  system  it  was  a 
system  of  forced  labor.  Ht  could  not  be  maintained  with- 
out compulsion  because  the  government  insisted  on  keep- 
ing up  the  culture  of  crops  that  could  not  return  both 
profit  to  itself  and  fair  wages  to  the  laborers.  The  ex- 
pectation that  export  articles  would  pay  well  for  their 
cultivation,  wherever  grown,  proved  false,  and  if  the 
planter  had  been  an  individual  instead  of  a  government, 
the  cultivation  would  have  stopped  in  many,  perhaps  in 
most,  district^ 

With  pay  so  small,  and  with  all  the  chances  on  which 
it  depended  so  far  removed  from  their  control,  the  natives 
lost  all  stimulus  to  work.  '  They  gave  their  labor  grudg- 
ingly and  made  no  attempts  to  acquire  skill  or  to  prevent 
waste  re  tlie  operations  that  were  required  of  them.  The 
yield  of  the  government  cultures  was  markedly  less  than 
that  of  free  industry. ^      And  besides  the  loss  in  quantity 

1  Van  Soest,  KS.,  2  :  228  ;  Pierson,  KP.,  156.  Men  had  sometimes  to 
leave  their  families  for  three  or  four  months  to  work  on  distant  sugar- 
tields,  and  would  return  to  find  wife  and  children  dead  or  gone.  "Jets 
over  de  misbruiicen,"  TNL,  1854,  IG  :  1 :  36. 

2  Figures  simply  confirm  the  impression  made  by  the  early  history  of 
the  contingent  system  that  the  quantity  was  less  and  the  quality  worse 
than  in  free  cultures.  Baud  found  that  the  government  sugar  culture, 
under  the  most  favorable  conditions,  gave  a  product  less  than  half  that 
attained  by  free  native  planters.  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  2  :  654.  A  man 
who  lived  as  an  indigo  planter  in  Java  for  some  years  said  that  the  gov- 
ernment indigo  culture  gave  5\  lb.  where  private  culture  gave  20  ;  he 
discusses  the  reasons.  Q.  v.  Ufford,  "  De  indigo-teelt  in  de  vorstenlanden 
van  Java,"  De  Econ.,  1860,  184  ff.,  188.  The  production  of  pepper,  under 
free  labor,  was  two  to  three  times  that  of  Iho  government  culture.  "  Over 
de    Gouvernements   pcper   kultuur   op   Java,"  TNI.,  18G2,  21:340-341. 


274  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

and  quality  due  to  the  employment  of  forced  labor,  the 
product  suffered  further  deterioration  in  the  factories 
under  the  system  of  government  monopoly.  Whether 
the  government  carried  on  the  processes  of  manufacture 
itself  or  intrusted  the  manufacture  to  contractors,  the 
stimulus  of  competition  was  lacking  in  both  cases  and  the 
result  was  the  same,  a  product  of  poor  quality.  ^ 

In  taking  over  the  system  of  the  old  East  India  Com- 
pany, the  Dutch  government  was  drawn  inevitably  into 
the  old  policy  of  monopoly  and  exclusion.  Itself  a  pro- 
ducer, it  was  bound  to  view  competitors  with  jealousy, 
and  was  forced  into  an  attitude  of  hostility  toward  all, 
either  natives  or  Dutch,  who  engaged  in  the  production  of 
export  articles  on  their  own  account.  Bosch  said,  before 
the  introduction  of  the  culture  system,  that  he  proposed 
not  to  do  away  with  the  principles  of  free  trade  and  free 
disposition  of  labor,  but  only  to  modify  them  indirectly, 
to  stimulate  the  production  of  Europeans  and  natives  and 
make  Java  a  good  market  for  Dutch  manufactures. ^    This 

The  government  coffee  culture  gave  not  only  a  smaller  product  (three- 
fourths  according  to  one  estimate),  but  one  of  inferior  quality,  and  the  life 
of  a  coffee  tree  in  Java  was  scarcely  more  than  half  of  what  it  was  in 
Ceylon,  where  the  tree  was  properly  cared  for.    Pierson,  KP.,  155  ff. 

1  See  in  general  Van  Soest,  KS.,  2:139,  215;  Woordenboek  NL, 
3  :  627.  Many  of  the  contractors  were  unreliable  and  ignorant,  especially 
at  first;  the  "sugar"  which  the  government  was  forced  to  take  from 
them  was  more  like  mud,  and  considerable  quantities  of  it  were  con- 
demned every  year  as  unfit  to  be  transported  to  Europe.  S.  van  Deventer, 
LS.,  2:  701.  The  government  industry  turned  out  such  poor  indigo  that 
the  price  fell  in  Europe  ;  according  to  the  Woordenboek  (1  :  522),  a  reform 
was  effected  later.  In  1842  the  government  allowed  contractors  to  sell  a 
part  of  their  product  in  the  open  market  on  condition  that  they  furnished 
a  better  quality  to  the  government  at  the  low  fixed  price  ;  this  grant  of 
partial  freedom  was  successful  in  stimulating  manufacturers  to  better 
methods.    Pierson,  KP.,  112. 

2  Bosch  to  Elout,  June  15,  1829,  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  2  :  615. 


VII  CULTURE   SYSTEM:    POLICY  275 

statement,  like  most  of  the  others  made  by  Bosch,  was 
good  reading  for  the  upholders  of  liberal  principles,  but  of 
no  practical  effect.  In  respect  to  the  natives  the  govern- 
ment tried  so  far  as  it  was  able  to  make  them  "ascripti 
glebae,"  by  maintaining  previous  regulations  that  hin- 
dered the  free  movement  of  labor.  The  natives  were  sub- 
ject to  an  elaborate  and  oppressive  system  of  passports, 
designed  to  hold  them  to  their  work  under  the  culture 
system,  but  constantly  evaded  in  practice. ^  Independent 
native  producers  lacked  the  right  to  dispose  freely  of 
products  competing  with  the  government  cultures. ^ 

In  respect  to  European  planters  the  government  policy 
was  at  first  determined,  so  far  as  regards  legal  form,  by 
the  principles  inherited  from  the  preceding  liberal  period. 
The  colonial  constitution  of  1827  made  it  the  duty  of  the 
government  to  encourage  and  extend  the  grant  of  lands  to 

1  See  "Afschaffing  van  bet  passenstelsel,"  TNL,  1863,  1:2:236  ff. 
The  system  grew  out  of  police  regulations  designed  to  facilitate  the  cap- 
ture of  criminals.  It  was  very  inefficient.  Van  der  Wijck  showed  that  it 
led  to  the  imprisonment  of  twenty  innocent  men  for  an  average  of  ten 
days  for  every  criminal  that  was  taken.  Under  the  culture  system  it  was 
used  to  prevent  migration  and  to  keep  independent  planters  from  getting 
laborers.  According  to  a  regulation  of  1833  vagabonds,  against  whom  no 
criminal  charge  could  be  brought,  were  to  be  set  to  work  in  "  agricultural 
establishments"  ;  natives  who  did  not  render  all  the  services  demanded 
were  improperly  punished  under  this  regulation.  S.  van  Deventer,  LS., 
3:177. 

2  By  a  law  of  1833  natives  were  not  allowed  to  sell  coffee  even  for  con- 
sumption within  the  district  where  it  was  produced.  Later  the  residents 
were  allowed  some  discretion  in  regulating  such  sales,  but  as  they  were 
inclined  to  strictness  by  their  personal  interests  (culture  percentages) 
they  were  hardly  likely  to  make  concessions.  S.  van  Deventer,  LS., 
2  :  564.  The  measures  taken  by  an  official  in  1844  against  natives  plant- 
ing sugar  cane  on  their  own  account  shows  that  the  government  attacked 
not  only  the  sale  but  the  production  of  articles  competing  with  its  mo- 
nopoly ;  i&.,  3  :  133. 


276  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

Europeans,  and  the  constitution  of  1830  retained  this  lib- 
eral feature.  It  was,  however,  entirely  inconsistent  with 
the  spirit  of  the  culture  system,  and  was  disregarded  by 
the  government  from  the  start.  Independent  planters 
had  a  bad  name  with  the  government  as  "particulars," 
"fortune-seekers,"  and  were  practically  excluded  from 
the  island.  There  were  a  few  leases  of  waste  land  to 
Europeans  under  Baud,  the  successor  of  Van  den  Bosch 
as  Governor  General,  but  the  law  of  1838,  the  first  general 
regulation,  was  distinctly  opposed  to  them,  and  the  gov- 
ernment decided  in  1810  that  the  leasing  of  land  to  pri- 
vate persons  for  the  cultivation  of  coffee,  sugar,  and  indigo 
should  cease  entirely,  and  that  for  other  cultures  no  lease 
should  be  granted  without  the  express  permission  of  the 
minister  of  the  colonies.^  European  planters  could  culti- 
vate crops  in  competition  with  the  public  cultures  only  in 
the  "particular"  lands  that  had  passed  out  of  govern- 
ment control,  and  there  only  in  the  face  of  an  irregular 
official  opposition.  As  a  result  the  number  of  Dutch  who 
supported  themselves  in  entire  independence  of  the  gov- 
ernment service  was  very  small,  only  six  hundred  and 
eight  in  1856  in  all  Java  and  Madura,  out  of  a  total 
population  that  amounted  to  about  twenty  thousand, 
exclusive  of  soldiers.     Of  foreign  Europeans  there  were 


iVan  Soest,  3  :  72  ff. ;  Pierson,  KP.,  102;  De  Louter,  605.  Mouey, 
1  :  1.36  ff.,  is  all  wrong.  According  to  Ward,  in  his  report  on  the  progress 
of  Netherlands  EI.  (Rep.  of  H.  M.  Sec.  of  Embassy,  Lond.,  1863,  6  :  145), 
the  number  of  leases  held  of  the  government  varied  in  1858-1860  from 
38  to  41.  Attempts  to  open  Java  to  European  colonization  were  failures  ; 
S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  3  :  190  ;  "  Kolonisatie  in  Neerlands  Oost  Indie,"  De 
Econ.,  1858,  Bijblad,  309  ff.  The  chapter  in  Money  on  the  treatment 
of  Europeans  (2  :  169  ff.)  gives  many  details  showing  the  jealousy  with 
which  the  government  protected  its  preserves. 


VII  CULTURE   SYSTEM:   POLICY  277 

in  the  same  year  less  than  one  hundred  engaged  in  gain- 
ful occupations.  The  British  representative  wrote  to  his 
government  in  1868  that  under  the  existing  system  all 
private  enterprises  depended  on  the  person  of  the  Governor 
General,  on  his  power  to  grant  and  revoke  government 
contracts,  permission  to  settle,  etc.  "  Nine  million  florins 
sent  out  to  Java  for  investment  were  remitted  back  to 
Holland  during  the  past  year,  on  account  of  the  feeling  of 
uncertainty  as  to  the  future,  and  consequent  want  of  good 
security  that  prevailed."^  It  will  be  unnecessary  to 
repeat  here  the  bad  results  proceeding  from  this  exclu- 
sion of  European  entrepreneurs ;  the  subject  has  already 
been  discussed  in  a  previous  chapter. 

The  tendency  of  the  Dutch  in  the  period  of  the  culture 
system  to  revert  to  the  methods  of  the  old  East  India 
Company  showed  itself  also  in  the  matter  of  foreign  com- 
merce. Reference  has  been  made  in  a  previous  chapter  to 
the  establishment  of  the  NederlandscTie  Handelmaatschappij . 
This  trading  company,  in  which  the  king  was  a  large  stock- 
holder, was  designed  originally  to  control  commerce  with 
the  East  rather  by  its  great  capital  and  assumed  economic 
superiority  than  by  any  special  public  privileges.  In  its 
early  years  it  disappointed  the  expectations  of  its  founders. 
With  the  establishment  of  the  culture  system,  however,  it 
began  a  new  lease  of  life ;  almost  as  though  it  were  suc- 
ceeding to  a  just  inheritance  it  secured  for  itself  a  large 
share  of  the  commercial  monopoly  of  its  predecessor.  It 
had  been  the  practice  in  the  liberal  period  of  the  restored 
Dutch  rule  to  sell  the  government  products  in  Java  in  so 

1  Thurlow's  report  of  1868,  p.  418.  The  statistics  are  from  the  Woor- 
denboek.  1 :  599.  See  there,  1  :  680,  for  example  of  the  way  in  which 
private  planters  were  hampered  by  political  influence. 


278  THE  DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap,  vii 

far  as  was  practicable,  and  an  active  commerce  had  sprung 
up  in  the  products  of  government  and  private  cultures,  in 
which  foreigners,  especially  English  and  Americans,  had 
taken  a  prominent  part.  Under  the  culture  system  the 
government  controlled  the  production  of  the  largest  part 
of  the  exports.  It  was  perfectly  natural  that  the  govern- 
ment should  attempt  to  confine  the  trade  in  these  exports 
to  its  own  subjects,  and  in  view  of  the  semi-official  charac- 
ter of  the  trading  company,  it  is  not  surprising  that  it  was 
granted  a  monopoly.  Under  the  so-called  consignment 
system  it  was  given  the  sole  right  to  transport  the  prod- 
ucts of  the  government  cultures  to  the  Netherlands,  where 
it  sold  them  on  government  account.  It  acted  also  as  a 
finance  company  to  support  the  government  in  its  indus- 
trial enterprises,  advancing  money  on  the  products  when 
they  were  first  received,  though  it  could  not  realize  on 
them  for  over  a  year  afterwards.  The  trading  company 
profited  by  the  experience  of  its  predecessor  and  carried 
on  its  operations  by  chartered  ships ;  it  secured  very 
advantageous  contracts  from  the  government,  and  by 
its  interest  and  commission  charges  it  made  large  profits. 
These  gains,  it  is  hardly  necessary  to  say,  were  made  at 
the  expense  of  the  public  interests.  The  United  States 
commercial  agent  at  Batavia  wrote  in  1855  that  "  trade 
here,  both  Dutch  and  foreign,  is  crushed  by  the  giant 
monopoly  known  under  the  name  of  the  '  Trading  Soci- 
ety,' which,  from  its  large  capital,  and  its  privileges 
granted  by  charter,  kills  all  private  enterprise."^ 

1  U.  S.  Commercial  Eelations,  quarto,  1857,  3  :  186.  For  details  on  this 
topic  see  the  articles  by  N.  P.  van  den  Berg  in  Enc.  NI.;  consignatie- 
stelsel,  1  :  379  ft  ;  Handelmaatschappij,  2 :  9  £f. 


CHAPTER   VIII 

THE   CULTURE   SYSTEM:     GOVERNMENT 

r  j^HE  preceding  chapter  was  devoted  mainly  to  a  study 
-*-  of  the  policy  of  the  Dutch  government  during  the 
perfod  of  the  culture  system.  The  word  "policy"  implies  of 
course  politics,  but  in  this  case  the  aims  of  the  government 
were  so  purely  fiscal  that  the  description  and  criticism  in 
the  chapter  were  mainly  economic  in  character  ;  attention 
was  directed  especially  to  the  economic  flaws  of  the  system 
and  to  its  material  results.  It  is  necessary  for  complete- 
ness to  study  now  the  history  of  the  Dutch  in  Java  at  this 
period  from  another  standpoint,  from  that  of  the  ruler 
rather  tlian  of  the  money-maker.  It  will  be  necessary  to 
note  the  characteristics  of  the  spirit,  the  methods  and  the 
results  of  government  in  the  period  of  the  system,  and  to 
suggest  the  connection  between  these  characteristics  and 
the  system  itself.  No  sharp  line  can  be  drawn  between 
policy  and  government ;  many  topics  could  be  treated 
equally  well  under  either  head ;  but  even  a  rough  classifi- 
cation seems  better  than  none  at  all. 

First  in  order  will  be  a  description  of  the  effects  that 
the  system  had  on  previously  existing  institutions  for 
supplying  revenue.  In  discussing  the  tax  system  of  the 
Dutch  government  during  the  operation  of  the  culture 
system,  it  is  important  that  the  reader  should  bear  in  mind 
the   fact  already  noticed,  that  the  government  cultures 

279 


280  THE   DUTCH   IN  JAVA  chap. 

were  imposed  on  only  a  part,  and  the  smaller  part,  of  the 
native  population.  To  secure  revenue  from  the  people 
who  were  free  from  forced  cultures  the  government  had 
to  look  to  the  ordinary  forms  of  taxation  as  they  had  been 
developed  by  previous  administration. 

In  regard,  then,  to  the  most  important  tax,  the  land-tax, 
there  is  a  double  question  ;  first,  to  what  extent  were  the 
natives  who  were  subject  to  forced  cultures  relieved  from 
it  ;  second,  how  was  it  applied  and  developed  in  the  case 
of  the  natives  from  whom  it  was  exacted.      The  original 
scheme  provided  that  the  natives  should  give  their  land 
and  labor  to  cultures  in  lieu  of  paying  the  land-tax,  and 
colonial  legislation  confirmed  this   feature  of  the   plan.i 
We  find,  however,  in  fact,  that  the  land-tax  was  still  re- 
tained for  natives  under  the  culture  system,  at  least  in 
being  taken  as  the  standard  for  their  payments.      They 
were  not  quits  with  the  government  if  they  gave  their 
land  and  labor  ;  they  must  produce  enough  at  the  tasks 
the  government  set  them  to  equal  at  any  rate  what  they 
had  given  before  in  taxes  on  their  rice  lands.     The  gov- 
ernment was  attempting  to  play  with  them  the  game  of 
"heads  I  win,  tails  you  lose."      So  we  find  results  such  as 
those  set  forth  in  the  report  of  Baud's  journey  of  inspec- 
tion.2     He  found  that  in  fifteen  districts  of  Cheribon  the 
natives  were  able  in  general  to  pay  only   bSfc    of  their 
land-tax  with  the  products  of  their  indigo  culture.     Tak- 
ing the  districts  in  detail,  they  secured  from  the  indigo 

1  Van  der  Poel,  "Nota,"  1850,  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  3  :  279,  quotes 
Staatsblad,  1834,  No.  22,  as  securing  remission  of  the  land-tax  to  all  en- 
gaged in  cultures. 

2  S.  van  Deventer,  LS. ,  2  :  630,  This  was  after  the  passage  of  Statute 
No.  22,  which  he  quotes. 


vin  THE   CULTURE   SYSTEM:    GOVERNMENT  281 

crops  the  following  amounts,  in  percentages  of  the  land- 
tax  owed  by  them  :  — 

5  districts    less  than    30  %  of  land-tax 

3  districts    less  than    50%  of  land-tax 
2  districts    less  than    80%  of  land-tax 

4  districts  more  than  100%  of  land-tax 
1  district   more  than  200%  of  land-tax 

Very  often  the  whole  land-tax,  or  the  difference  be- 
tween the  amounts  which  were  due  from  the  natives  on 
the  standard  of  the  old  land-tax  and  the  actual  product  of 
the  cultures  at  the  government  rates,  was  remitted. ^  It 
is  apparent,  however,  that  the  whole  tendency  of  the 
government  was  to  force  the  natives  to  pay  all  that  they 
had  paid  before  and  as  much  more  as  it  was  possible  to 
get  from  them.  It  is  impossible  to  fix  statistically  the 
number  of  natives  engaged  in  cultures  who  enjoyed  re- 
mission of  taxes ;  the  privilege  of  remission  rested  with 
the  minor  administrative  officials,  and  was  used  by  them 
at  discretion.  It  is  certain  that  many,  probably  most,  of 
the  natives  bore  the  double  burden  of  culture  services  and 
taxes  too. 2 

Of  more  interest  in  the  present  connection  is  the  land-tax 
imposed  on  natives  who  remained  free  from  the  govern- 
ment cultures.  The  culture  system  influenced  the  devel- 
opment of  this  tax  mainly  in  a  negative  way,  by  diverting 
from  it  to  the  forced  cultures  the  attention  of  government 

1  Cf.  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  2  :  634,  639,  750. 

2  Woordenboek  NX.,  3  :  486-487,  gives  statistics  of  land-tax  in  sugar- 
fields  in  relation  to  production  and  government  remuneration,  but  I  am 
not  sure  of  their  interpretation.  See  Van  Soest,  3  :  189  ff.,  for  examples 
of  arbitrary  action  of  oflBcials  in  imposing  land-tax  on  fields  occupied  with 
cultures.  Bleeker,  "  Het  partikulier  landbezit  op  Java,"  De  Gids,  1863, 
1  :  23,  quotes  examples  from  Krajenbrink  of  the  double  imposition  of 
cultures  and  land-tax. 


282  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

officials,  and  letting  the  former  tax  continue  with  all  its 
old  imperfections.  One  would  expect,  from  the  spirit  of 
the  government  in  the  period  of  the  culture  system, 
that  attempts  would  be  made  to  force  greater  revenue 
from  this  source  also.  There  were,  indeed,  spasmodic 
attempts  on  the  part  of  officials  to  increase  the  returns 
of  the  tax,  often  with  a  suddenness  that  would  have 
been  brutal  if  the  attempt  could  have  been  realized. 
The  passive  resistance  of  the  native  organization  pre- 
vented any  rapid  changes,  and  the  amount  returned 
by  the  tax  grew  at  about  the  same  rate  as  in  the 
previous  period. ^ 

The  administration  and  collection  of  the  tax  were  to 
such  an  extent  in  the  hands  of  the  natives  themselves 
that  the  government  could  not  regulate  its  amount  or 
control  its  action.  Least  of  all  could  it  do  this  when  it 
was  putting  all  energy  into  the  extension  of  cultures. 
The  European  personnel  in  the  tax  department  remained 
entirely  inadequate  to  its  duties.^  Occasional  investiga- 
tions showed  that  the  tax  was  raised  in  a  haphazard, 
entirely  unsystematic  way.  Different  systems  of  impos- 
ing the  tax  were  followed  in  different  places.  Some 
lands  estimated  for  taxation  at  319  bouws  really  meas- 
ured 460 ;  others  estimated  at  492  measured  719.  The 
proportion  of  the  product  received  by  the  government 
was  estimated  to  be  12^  in  one  residency,  28^  in  another, 

%   in   a   third.     This   does   not   mean,  of  course,  that 


1  According  to  the  figures  in  the  "Memorial  of  the  Director  of  Cultures  " 
(S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  3  :  191)  the  yield  of  the  tax,  in  millions  of  gulden, 
was  as  follows  for  the  years  1833  to  1841  ;  7.3,  7.4,  7.6,  8.0,  8.0,  8.2,  8.6, 
9.3,  9.9.  Comparison  with  the  yield  1818-1829  (ib.  2  :  129)  shows  no 
important  change  in  the  rate  of  growth. 

2  See  on  this  point  and  for  the  facts  following  in  the  text  the  report  of 
Assistant  Resident  Clignett,  1836,  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  3:  45  ff. 


VIII  THE   CULTURE   SYSTEM:    GOVERNMENT  283 

the  common  people  actually  paid  no  more  than  that. 
The  penatoes  of  Kadoe,  native  officials  who  were  at  the 
head  of  groups  of  five  or  more  villages,  took  not  un- 
commonly half  the  product,  and  kept  the  surplus  after 
paying  the  tax  to  the  government. ^  All  the  abuses  of 
former  times  maintained  themselves,  in  short.  Some 
attempts  were  made  to  revise  the  system  in  details,^  and 
in  1844  the  Governor  General,  Merkus,  proposed  a  general 
reform,  but  not  enough  interest  was  taken  in  the  matter 
in  this  period  to  lead  to  any  important  results,  and  the 
whole  question  of  the  land-tax  was  handed  down  for 
solution  in  a  later  time. 

While  the  culture  system  did  not  lead  to  any  great 
increase  in  the  money  taxes  of  the  natives,  it  was  attended 
by  a  great  increase  in  the  demand  for  labor  services,  out- 
side the  culture  services  proper.  This  demand  came  from 
a  number  of  sources,  from  officials  both  European  and 
native,  acting  both  in  a  public  and  a  private  capacity. 
The  government  grudged  the  expenditure  of  any  ready 
money,  and  accomplished  the  execution  of  any  public 
works  that  seemed  necessary,  such  as  fortifications,  roads 
and  bridges,  and  the  like,  by  the  forced  labor  of  the 
natives,  for  which  it  returned  insignificant  pay.  Officials 
found  it  to  their  personal  advantage  to  get  the  attention 
of  their  superiors  by  forcing  the  natives  to  make  roads, 
build  stone  inns,  and  embellish  towns  j  and  merely  to  make 

1  "Memorial  of  Director  of  Cultures,"  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  3  :  198 
(ca.  1844). 

2  A  royal  decree  of  1842  ordered  that  the  land-tax  in  some  parts  of  Java 
should  be  collected  in  money,  but  it  was  not  until  1859  that  the  attempt 
was  made  to  carry  this  into  effect.  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  3  :  85,  186,  188. 
Some  reforms  were  actually  effected  in  other  and  less  important  taxes,  as 
in  the  abolition  of  the  oppressive  tax  on  markets  and  shops,  1861. 


284  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

this  show  of  zeal  wasted  an  immense  amount  of  labor,  as 
will  appear  immediately.  Furthermore  they  expected  to 
live  off  the  country,  whether  they  were  at  home  or  travel- 
ling, by  levying  contributions  on  the  natives'  produce  and 
.services. ^  In  some  sections  of  country  the  work  alone 
on  roads  and  bridges  amounted  to  more  than  all  the 
services  that  had  been  demanded  formerly  by  the  native 
government,  and  the  total  effect  of  the  culture  system  with 
its  attendant  demands  was  estimated  to  be  an  increase  of 
burdens  from  ten  to  one  hundred  fold.^  While  the  natives 
in  the  chief  city  of  Cheribon  were  allowed  to  purchase 
exemption  from  all  services  except  the  communal  for  three 
gulden  a  year,  cultivators  in  one  of  the  country  districts 
paid  as  tnuch  as  three  gulden  a  month  for  exemption,  and 
there  are  said  to  have  been  cases  where  the  price  of  remis- 
sion was  sixty  gulden  a  year.^  Men  were  so  burdened 
with  forced  services  that  in  some  cases  they  had  to  them- 
selves little  more  than  one  day  in  the  week,  A  Dutch 
ofBcial  estimated  that  at  least  one-fourth  of  the  working 
time  of  the  natives  was  taken  up  with  services.*     Much  of 

^  See  a  summary  of  the  effect  of  the  culture  system  in  increasing  the 
burden  of  various  liinds  of  forced  services  in  Van  der  Poel's  "  Nota,"  1849, 
S.  van  Deventer,  LS. ,  3  :  259  ff.  He  said  that  the  system  led  to  practical 
slavery.  A  list  of  the  services  required  by  government,  giving  an  idea  of 
their  great  variety,  will  be  found  in  "  Opgave  van  alle  diensten  die  van 
rijkswege  verrigt  werden  in  het  Regentschap  Bangil  van  1825  tot  1843," 
Bijd.  TLV.,  1862,  2:6:  116-120. 

2  Report  of  Inspector  of  Cultures,  1855,  Eindresum^  3:  Bijlage  K.I, 
p.  147.  An  idea  of  the  difficulty  of  the  work  on  roads  is  given  in  Van 
Sevenhoven's  "Nota,"  1834,  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  2  :  724. 

8  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  2  :  480,  763  ;  Van  Soest,  KS. ,  3  :  180.  It  should 
be  remembered  that  150  gulden  is  a  liberal  estimate  of  the  average  annual 
earnings  of  a  family. 

*  Een  Pessimist,  "Indische  toestanden,"  TNI.,  1873,  2:1:  131.  He 
suggested  .the  following  revision  of  the  fourth  commandment,  to  be  put  in 


viii  THE   CULTURE   SYSTEM:    GOVERNMENT  285 

the  labor,  especially  that  in  the  government  fortifications, 
had  to  be  carried  on  far  from  home  and  under  extremely 
unwholesome  conditions.  There  is  a  story,  not  credible, 
but  one  which  would  not  have  lived  except  for  the  grain 
of  truth  in  it,  that  when  the  fortifications  were  being  built 
at  Gombong,  in  the  period  of  the  culture  system,  the 
natives  bound  to  service  were  ordered  to  take  the  necessary 
burial  shrouds  with  them.^ 

A  feature  which  must  strike  the  student  of  the  history 
of  Java  at  this  period  is  the  pitiful  inefficiency  of  the 
natives  doing  public  work  under  the  direction  of  the  gov- 
ernment, and  the  uselessness  of  much  of  the  work  that 
_they  did.  Take,  for  a  concrete  example,  the  description 
of  the  building  of  a  dam.  A  force  of  twelve  hundred 
men  labored,  one-third  with  spades,  one-third  with  mat- 
tocks, and  the  remainder  employed  in  dragging  timber ; 
they  were  superintended  by  a  force  of  about  one  hundred 
native  chiefs  attended  by  their  servants,  musicians,  danc- 
ing girls,  and  trumpeters.  The  men  worked  without 
proper  implements,  excavating  but  one-fifth  of  a  cubic 
yard  a  day  apiece,  and  carrying  the  earth  from  place  to 
place  in  baskets  holding  about  half  a  cubic  foot.  The 
native  officials  who  supervised  the  work  were  utterly 
incompetent;  they  did  not  care  which  way  their  men 
were  going  so  long  as  they  appeared  to  be  in  motion ; 
earth  was  carried  to  one  place  in  the  morning  and  back 
again   at   night.      There    was   no    organization ;    bridges 

the  mouth  of  the  Dutch  government :  "Six  days  shall  ye  labor  for  your- 
selves or  for  me ;  and  of  the  work  ye  do  for  yourselves  I  shall  take  one- 
fourth,  and  of  the  work  ye  do  for  me  I  shall  take  two-fifths,  but  the 
seventh  day  ye  shall  serve  your  master;    this  day  shall  belong  to  me- 
al together." 

1  Korevaar,  Ind.  Glds,  1891,  2  :  2176. 


286  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap 

were  so  narrow  that  one  hundred  men  were  always  wait- 
ing at  them ;  men  were  grouped  so  thickly  that  only  one 
out  of  ten  could  do  any  work.  These  men  worked  over 
three  months  and  received  no  remuneration.^  I  do  not 
know  the  later  history  of  this  dam,  but  similar  public 
works  of  greater  magnitude  were  utter  failures,  from  lack 
of  competent  engineers  and  proper  supervision.  An 
attempt  to  get  water  connection  with  the  Bay  of  Tjilatjap 
failed  because  an  impossible  route  had  been  selected ; 
another  route  was  chosen,  but  the  difficulties  experienced 
from  the  caving  in  of  the  banks  caused  this  second  canal 
to  be  abandoned,  and  connection  was  finally  made  by  a 
third.  The  work  on  another  canal  was  all  lost  for  similar 
reasons. 2  The  work  done  by  command  of  government 
officials  was  often  perfectly  useless.  One  resident  had 
the  fancy  to  have  the  roads  lined  with  hedges ;  his  suc- 
cessor had  them  torn  up  and  replaced  by  stone  walls. 
A  third  resident  required  the  roads  of  his  residency  to  be 
bordered  by  finished  wood  fences,  which  had  always  to  be 
kept  neatly  whitewashed.  Meanwhile  the  government 
would  not  allow  the  natives  to  use  the  regular  post-roads 
for  the  carriage  of  their  products,  but  required  them  to 
maintain  parallel  ways  that  were  of  course  vastly  inferior. ^ 
Turning  now  to  a  broader  topic,  the  general  character 
of  the  Dutch  government  in  Java  at  this  period,  it  must 

1  Thurlow's  Report,  1868,  p.  366  ff.  According  to  the  report  of  1849 
the  government,  even  vrhen  it  paid  some  vrage  to  forced  labor,  found  it  so 
inefficient  that  it  could  save  money  by  paying  a  higher  wage  to  free  labor. 
TNI.,  1860,  22:2:  167. 

2  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  2  :  647,  652,  733. 

8  Van  Soest,  KS.,  3:  178,  187.  If  we  can  believe  "Max  Havelaar," 
p.  38,  the  "highways  "  built  by  forced  labor  were  often  only  broad  paths, 
unserviceable  in  wet  weather  because  of  the  mud. 


vin  THE   CULTURE   SYSTEM:    GOVERNMENT  287 

be  said  that  it  is  very  difficult  to  reach  an  estimate  of  the 
influence  of  the  culture  system  that  will  be  satisfactory  in 
all  respects.  It  is  not  hard  to  ascertain  the  faults  of  the 
government  in  this  period.  Van  Deventer's  collection  of 
documents  furnishes  ample  material  of  a  perfectly  trust- 
worthy character ;  the  official  reports  contained  in  it  were 
written  by  men  who  not  only  had  a  thorough  personal 
knowledge  of  the  facts  that  they  described,  but  who  also 
were  in  most  cases  adherents  of  the  system,  and  who  in  all 
cases  served  best  their  personal  interests  by  describing 
conditions  in  the  most  favorable  light.  The  difficulty  lies 
not  in  ascertaining  the  facts  but  in  drawing  just  conclu- 
sions from  them.  One  danger  lies  in  the  temptation  to 
compare  the  conditions  of  government  under  the  culture 
system  with  conditions  in  previous  periods,  and  to  infer 
from  the  evils  known  to  have  existed  after  1830  that  gov- 
ernment became  much  worse  in  the  period  of  the  system. 
I  am  inclined  to  believe,  however,  that  this  contrast  in 
the  conditions  before  and  after  1830  has  been  exaggerated 
by  some  authors.  In  reading  the  history  before  1830,  one 
is  often  fretted  by  the  feeling  that  the  writers  did  not 
know  or  did  not  choose  to  describe  all  the  evils  that 
existed ;  possibly  if  we  had  on  the  early  periods  informa- 
tion so  extensive  and  presented  with  such  an  avowedly 
critical  purpose  as  in  Van  Deventer's  collection,  we  should 
not  find  the  evils  of  government  under  the  culture  system 
so  entirely  novel.  It  seems  safest  not  to  attempt  to  show 
that  the  government  suffered  a  great  decline  after  1830 ; 
it  will  be  enough  to  show  that  it  was  bad,  and  has  been 
vastly  improved  in  recent  times. 

Another  danger,  perhaps  more  insidious,  is  the  tendency 
to  ascribe  to  the  culture  system,  a  peculiar  means  of  rais- 


288  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

ing  government  revenue,  all  the  faults  of  government  that 
appeared  during  the  period  of  its  operation.  The  system 
has  enough  to  answer  for  in  the  economic  evils  that 
inevitably  attended  it.  Many  of  the  political  evils  could 
just  as  well  have  existed  under  any  other  revenue  system ; 
they  resulted  not  from  the  culture  system  itself  but  from 
the  spirit  that  prompted  and  maintained  it,  the  spirit  of 
more  revenue  for  the  Dutch  at  any  cost  to  the  Javanese. 
The  spirit  of  greed  ruled  the  Dutch  government  as  it 
had  ruled  the  East  India  Company.  The  policy  was  not 
in  all  respects  so  short-sighted  as  it  had  been;  the  au- 
thorities in  the  Netherlands  were  willing  to  sanction 
expenditures  when  the  Dutch  rulers  in  Java  could  show 
good  prospects  of  an  immediate  money  return.  Liberal 
appropriations  were  allowed  for  the  extension  of  the 
culture  system,  though  the  colonial  government  could 
not  always  get  what  it  wanted  even  for  this  purpose, 
and  was  restricted  in  ways  that  must  have  hampered 
its  efficiency.^  For  other  purposes,  however,  for  the 
reform  of  the  government  administration  and  its  revenue 
system,  nothing  could  be  obtained  ;  the  home  authorities 
enjoined  an  economy  that  amounted  to  short-sighted 
stinginess.  Baud  ordered  in  1836,  just  before  he  retired 
from  Java,  an  investigation  looking  to  the  reform  of  the 
land-tax,  but  at  the  same  time  the  colonial  minister  was 
urging  "  strict  economy,"  and  nothing  could  be  effected. ^ 
In  1841  the  Governor  General  wrote  home,  describing 
abuses  existing  in  the  government  of  the  natives,  and  of 

^  A  law  of  1840,  quoted  by  Van  Soest,  3  :  96,  seems  characteristic  ; 
officials  were  warned  to  spare  the  use  of  printed  forms  when  these  could 
be  written  just  as  well.  Van  Soest  has  collected  a  number  of  examples  of 
government  parsimony.  2  g   ya^  Deventer,  LS.,  2  :  754  ;  3  :  25. 


VIII  THE   CULTURE   SYSTEM:    GOVERNMENT  289 

his  powerlessness  to  reform  them  without  the  expenditure 
of  money.  Baud,  now  become  minister  of  the  colonies, 
had  changed  his  point  of  view  with  his  office.  He  replied 
to  the  Governor  General  in  a  confidential  letter :  "  The 
bow  is  constantly  tight  drawn  in  this  country.  I  cannot 
and  may  not  advise  you  to  give  up  a  system  designed  to 
assure  ample  contributions  from  the  colonial  revenues, 
and  to  keep  the  bow  from  breaking."  He  forbade  any 
increase  in  expenditures  that  was  not  most  strictly  neces- 
sary. He  could  not,  he  said,  just  to  save  the  peace  of 
mind  of  a  few  officials,  sanction  the  abrogation  of  "  the 
only  system  by  means  of  which  Java  can  continue  to  be 
the  life  preserver  of  the  Netherlands."^  Again,  in  1846, 
when  the  Governor  General  urged  the  reform  of  the  land- 
tax  on  the  basis  of  Merkus's  proposal,  the  minister  replied 
that  it  was  desirable  but  impracticable ;  it  would  need 
too  many  officials,  too  much  money. ^ 

The  welfare  of  the  natives  played  no  part  in  govern- 
ment calculations,  and  practically  nothing  was  done  for 
them.  An  examination  of  the  first  public  budget  of 
Dutch  India,  that  of  1840,  shows  that  of  the  public  ex- 
penditures all  but  an  inconsiderable  sum  went  to  main- 
tain Dutch  military  and  political  influence  and  means  of 
fiscal  exaction.  The  department  of  finance,  commerce, 
and  cultures  cost  over  30,000,000  gulden  and  the  depart- 
ment of  war  nearly  7,000,000;  internal  administration 
and  police  cost  3,500,000 ;  on  the  other  hand  a  sum 
of  about  500,000  was  allotted  to  the  department  of 
justice,   and  less   than  that  sum  to  the  objects  grouped 

i"de  kurk  waarop  Nederland  drijft"  ;  S.  van  Deventer,  LS., 
3  :  122. 

2  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  2  :  222. 


290  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

together  as  "agriculture,  religion,  arts,  and  sciences."^ 
Money  found  European  schools  and  missionaries  in  Java, 
but  all  under  government  control  and  carefully  restricted. 
"  They  are  chiefly  occupied  with  the  half-breeds,  and  with 
the  other  intermediate  races  at  the  seaports ;  but  in  the 
interior  the  natives  are  practically  denied  European  edu- 
cation and  are  secured  against  missionary  efforts  for  their 
conversion."  2  The  reason  for  this,  as  for  almost  all  the 
features  of  Dutch  policy  at  this  period,  was  the  greed  of 
gain  ;  the  political  reasons  that  Money  suggests  were 
subsidiary. 

Money  criticises  the  English  for  having  introduced  into 
Java  during  the  period  of  their  rule  a  system  of  adminis- 
tration too  expensive  to  be  maintained  by  the  undeveloped 
industrial  organization  to  which  it  was  applied,  and  justi- 
fies on  this  ground  the  introduction  of  the  culture  system. ^ 
This  point  has  been  discussed  in  an  earlier  chapter,  where 
I  attempted  to  show  that  the  needs  of  the  Netherlands 
rather  than  of  Java  occasioned  the  change  to  the  culture 
system ;  I  refer  to  it  now  only  for  the  sake  of  the  contrast 
in  which  it  puts  the  attitude  of  the  government  to  the 
Dutch  administration  in  Java  before  and  after  1830. 
After  1830  the  government  secured  its  increase  in  rev- 
enue not  only  by  forcing  production,  but  also  by  check- 
ing expenditure  even  in  the  most  necessary  departments 

1  See  the  figures  in  De  Waal,  NISG.,  3  :  10-11.  Comparison  with  the 
figures  of  1834  shows  little  change  in  the  appropriations  for  civilization. 
Education  does  not  appear  in  the  budget  at  all.  The  request  of  an  official, 
in  1835,  for  thirty  gulden,  copper,  a  month,  for  the  education  of  natives 
in  his  residency,  was  refused.     S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  2:  776,  note. 

2  Money,  1 :  45.  This  is  one  of  the  few  points  in  Dutch  policy  that 
Money  criticised.  He  thought  that  the  English  got  their  strongest  hold 
on  India  by  the  spread  of  education.    Cf.  ib.,  2  :  159. 

8  Java,  1  :  99. 


VIII  THE   CULTURE   SYSTEM:   GOVERNMENT  291 

of  administration.  As  a  result,  administrative  officials 
during  the  period  of  the  culture  system  were  in  number 
too  few  for  their  work,  in  quality  often  incompetent  or 
corrupt.  The  government  was  willing  to  increase  the 
number  of  officials  engaged  in  the  revenue  service,"  while 
it  refused  to  make  any  extension  in  the  political  depart- 
ment.^ The  European  officials,  who  were  supposed  to 
look  after  the  general  interests  of  the  people,  had  each  an 
immense  area  to  supervise,  and  if  they  had  had  the  best  of 
intentions,  they  could  not  have  exercised  a  very  efficient 
control  over  affairs. ^  When  abuses  finally  came  to  light 
and  were  charged  against  the  leaders  of  the  government, 
they  could  all  say,  as  did  one  of  the  Governors  General, 
"  I  did  not  know  it.     My  orders  were  not  carried  out."^ 

1  In  1833  Bosch  was  willing  to  appoint  two  controleurs  to  assist  in  the 
administration  of  cultures,  while  he  refused  the  resident  an  assistant. 
This  was  typical  of  the  period.     Cf.  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  2  :  589. 

2  For  example,  one  administrative  division,  Demak,  had  an  area  of 
1000  square  palen  (over  800  square  miles),  with  a  population  of  230,000. 
One  European  controleur  was  charged  with  all  the  duties  of  governing 
the  natives,  and  was  expected  to  perform  other  services  besides.  The 
government  refused  to  give  him  an  assistant.  The  sufferings  of  the 
natives  in  this  division  in  1849-1850  have  become  notorious.  See  [Van 
Hoevell]  "  Een  voorbeeld  van  de  bescherming  der  inlandsche  bevolking  op 
Java,"  TNI.,  1855,  17  :  2  :  82.  When  the  culture  system  was  introduced 
into  the  residency  of  Kediri,  a  district  with  nine  thousand  population  was 
governed  by  a  single  native  official,  on  a  salary  of  tliirty  gvilden  a  month, 
helped  only  by  a  policeman  or  two.  Nota  of  Hasselman,  1846,  S.  van 
Deventer,  LS.,  3  :  226.  A  former  oflScial  says  that  thefts  were  constant 
among  the  natives.  It  was  assumed  as  a  matter  of  course  that  a  well- 
dressed  native  owed  his  prosperity  to  some  unlawful  livelihood  ;  eight  men 
lived  near  his  official  residence  who  were  known  by  all  to  live  only  by 
thieving.  The  evil  could  not  be  stopped  because  the  administration  of 
justice  was  so  weak  ;  in  a  division  extending  eighty  miles  or  so  from  one 
limit  to  the  other  there  would  be  but  one  court,  and  criminals  were  seldom 
brought  to  justice.     TNI.,  1873,  2:1:  136. 

3  TNL,  1855,  17:2:  76. 


292  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

The  spirit  of  the  home  government  penetrated  the 
colonial  administration,  as  must  always  be  the  case,  and 
with  a  few  honorable  exceptions  the  officials  came  to 
think  that  nothing  mattered  so  long  as  the  revenues  were 
large.  Most  of  them  accepted  the  culture  system  with- 
out questioning ;  what  slight  resistance  they  showed  was 
crushed  by  the  great  power  that  Bosch  enjoyed,  and  soon 
all  opposition  was  eliminated. ^  ]\Ien  who  were  at  heart 
liberals,  like  Bosch's  successor,  Baud,  found  themselves 
bound  by  strict  instructions  and  justified  their  course  by 
the  "press  of  circumstances"  in  the  home  country. ^  Offi- 
cials soon  learned  that  their  careers  depended  on  the  fiscal 
showing  their  districts  could  make ;  ^  they  attended   to 

iCf.  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  2:182,  197;  3:1,  4.  One  councillor, 
Merkus,  presented  a  memorial  of  remonstrance  (see  his  Nota  of  1831,  ib., 
2  :  219  ff.)^  but  found  it  convenient  soon  after  to  ask  for  a  leave  of  absence, 
and  did  not  secure  again  his  position  in  Java. 

2  76.,  2  :  615,  617.  In  Elout,  Bijdragen,  1861,  Inleiding,  a  letter  from 
Baud  is  printed,  written  in  1851,  and  meant  to  justify  his  change  of  atti- 
tude ;  he  had  belonged  originally  to  the  supporters  of  the  land-tax,  but  had 
experienced  a  change  of  heart  because  of  the  need  of  "  export  products." 

3  The  resident  of  Pekalongan  was  discharged  and  put  on  half  pay,  in 
1833,  because  the  indigo  culture  had  turned  out  so  badly.  Bosch  wrote  : 
"  The  office  of  resident  can  be  filled  only  by  such  officials  as  have  the  will 
and  the  ability  to  introduce  the  culture  system  that  has  been  adopted,  and 
make  it  further  the  interests  both  of  the  Javanese  and  the  government." 
S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  2  :  574.  There  was  another  case  in  the  early  period 
of  the  culture  system  (1832-1833)  in  which  the  population  appeared  as 
suffering  from  over-extension  of  cultures  and  other  abuses  due  to  incom- 
petence of  officials  ;  the  resident  was  threatened  with  dismissal  and  a  sub- 
ordinate was  degraded.  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  2  :  410  ff.  In  later  times, 
when  the  impossibility  of  reconciling  the  interests  of  natives  and  govern- 
ment was  more  clearly  recognized,  officials  did  not  suffer  in  this  way. 
Experience  taught  them  that  they  need  not  worry  about  the  condition  of 
the  natives  so  long  as  the  demands  of  the  government  were  satisfied. 
Van  Soest  p;ives  examples  of  officials  who  were  promoted  when  they  were 
brought  to  the  attention  of  the  government  as  having  overworked  the 
natives.     KS.,  3  :  171. 


Till  THE   CULTURE   SYSTEM:    GOVERNMENT  293 

the  business  of  raising  revenue,  and  did  not  worry  the 
government  overmuch  with  accounts  of  the  sacrifices  of 
the  natives.^ 

An  efficient  means  to  interest  the  officials  in  the  success 
of  the  government  cultures  and  stimulate  them  to  increase 
the  return  was  the  percentage  system  introduced  by 
Bosch.  The  government  granted  a  certain  premium  or 
commission  on  the  product,  to  be  divided  among  the  offi- 
cials who  had  directed  the  culture.^  During  the  later 
period  of  the  system  over  1,000,000  gulden  a  year  were 
paid  out  in  this  form  of  percentages  on  three  cultures 
alone  ;  residents  had  their  salaries  doubled  or  more  than 
doubled  by  this  means. ^ 

A  tremendous  pressure  was  thus  brought  to  bear  on  the 
whole  political  administration  to  enlist  the  interest  of 
officials  in  the  yield  of  government  cultures.  Nothing 
could  have  been  more  efficient  in  accomplishing  the  end 
desired,  but  at  the  same  time  no  plan  could  have  been 
devised  more  certain  to  blind  the  eyes  of  officials  to  duties 


1  In  view  of  the  example  set  by  their  superiors,  it  is  not  surprising  tliat 
administrative  ofBcials  should  falsify  their  reports  and  gloss  over-unpleas- 
ant occurrences.  Dekker  (MH.,  165-166)  says  that  this  was  done  con- 
stantly. He  cites  as  characteristic  a  report  beginning  "During  the  past 
year  the  peace  remained  peaceful  (is  de  rust  rustig  gebleven)." 

2  For  example,  in  the  sugar  culture,  the  government  gave  the  resident 
10%  on  the  product,  and  gave  in  addition  a  sum  of  44  cents  per  pikol,  di- 
vided as  follows  :  16  to  the  subordinate  European  officials  ;  8  to  the  clerks  ; 
10  to  the  inspectors  ;  10  to  native  officials.  Van  Soest,  2  :  77.  The  amount 
and  mode  of  payment  varied  at  different  times. 

3  Piccardt,  CS.,  137  ;  Van  Soest,  3  :  169.  Money  said  that  some  resi- 
dents got  fl.  1200  to  fl.  1500  in  addition  to  their  salary.  1  :  126.  (The 
resident's  salary  was  12,000  to  15,000  gulden.)  It  is  said  that  when  the 
government  lowered  the  emoluments  in  the  indigo  culture  and  established 
a  fixed  salary,  the  officials  became  careless,  and  some  of  them  perfectly 
indifferent.     Vitalis,  Misbruiken,  TNI.,  250. 


294  THE   DUTCH   IN   JAVA  chap. 

proper  to  their  position.  They  were  taken  from  the 
sphere  of  public  servants  and  turned  into  managers  and 
overseers  of  plantations.  So  long  as  they  showed  a  good 
surplus  of  products  every  year,  the  home  government  put 
no  check  upon  their  action. 

Neither  in  the  training  of  officials  nor  in  the  regulation 
of  their  careers  by  promotion  did  the  government  take 
any  measures  sufficient  to  counteract  the  bad  influence  of 
its  fiscal  poHcy  upon  them.  In  character  and  abilities 
they  were  below  standard.  Various  laws  designed  to 
insure  a  proper  education  of  the  officials  in  the  higher 
posts  were  not  carried  out  in  practice,  and  a  real  reform 
of  the  civil  service  was  deferred  to  the  reform  period  after 
1860.1  In  1846,  when  a  reform  of  the  land-tax  was  under 
discussion,  an  official  on  leave  in  the  Netherlands  reported 
to  the  home  government  that  a  reform  such  as  was  pro- 
posed could  not  be  carried  out  by  oi^cials  of  the  kind  that 
then  ruled  Java.  Subordinate  officials,  by  whom  the  re- 
form would  have  to  be  executed,  counted  in  their  number 
some  zealous  and  experienced  men,  but  also  a  considerable 
proportion  of  very  poor  stuff  ("  zeer  onbedrevensujetten  "), 
who  did  not  even  appreciate  the  importance  of  the  matter, 
and  were  entirely  unfit  to  collect  information  on  which  to 
base  a  fair  system  of  taxation. ^  The  minister  wrote  to 
Java  that  the  reform  must  be  put  off,  not  only  on  account 
of  the  expense  it  would  entail,  but  also  because  of  the 
ignorance  of  the  officials.  Java  must  wait,  he  said,  for  a 
time  which  he  hoped  was  not  far  off,  when  every  official 

1  See  Lowell,  "  Colonial  Civil  Service,"  N.Y.,  1900, 114  ff.  A  descrip- 
tion of  the  theory  on  which  appointments  to  the  civil  service  were  based 
will  be  found  in  IMoney,  1  :  190  ff.,  but  it  is  uncritical  and  neglects  the 
facts  entirely. 

2  Note  of  Hasselmau,  1846,  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  3:  231. 


VIII  THE   CULTURE   SYSTEM:    GOVERNMENT  295 

would  be  master  of  a  native  language,  and  could  study  the 
native  institutions  intelligently.  ^  From  another  source  it 
would  appear  that  a  considerable  number  of  the  subordi- 
nate officials  had  more  or  less  command  of  Javanese,  and 
had  been  appointed  for  that  reason,  but  they  were,  as  sug- 
gested above,  morally  and  intellectually  incompetent.^ 

Favoritism  still  played  an  important  part  in  determin- 
ing appointments  and  promotions.  Officials  were  con- 
stantly transferred  to  make  room  for  others  who  had  no 
ability,  and  no  other  title  to  favor  than  the  relationship  or 
patronage  of  high  officials  or  of  aristocratic  Batavian  fami- 
lies. Good  men  were  kept  in  subordinate  positions  at  the 
centres  of  government,  because  their  superiors  found  them 
useful,  while  poor  men  were  promoted  to  a  place  in  the 
-provincial  administration  to  get  rid  of  them  ;  they  were 
said  to  be  "good  enough  for  the  interior." ^  The  results 
likely  to  follow  from  such  practices  are  pictured  in  the 
career  of  a  man  who  had  proved  his  unfitness  for  the  civil 
service  in  the  position  of  secretary  of  a  residency,  but  who 
enjoyed  protection  in  high  quarters  and  was  made  assist- 
ant resident.  To  make  a  place  for  him  a  competent  man 
was  transferred  to  a  less  desirable  post.     The  assistant 


1  Minister  to  Governor  General,  October,  1846.  S.  van  Deventer,  LS., 
3:221. 

2  Nota,  1852.  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  3  :  322.  The  report  says  that  the 
coutroleurs  were  young,  almost  all  born  in  Java,  and  not  nncoiumonly 
half-breeds.  I  shall  refer  again  to  them  in  discussing  abuses  in  the  native 
government, 

3  Vitalis,  "  Misbruiken  in  de  administratie  op  Java,"  TNI.,  1851. 
13:  2  :  250,  265.  The  author  was  himself  an  official,  and  perhaps  a  dis- 
appointed one  ;  I  know  of  no  other  reason  for  discrediting  his  testimony. 
He  says  that  the  residents  were  ignorant  and  careless,  and  that  there  had 
not  been  a  director  of  cultures  since  1836  who  had  a  competent  and 
practical  knowledge  of  the  workings  of  the  system. 


296  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

resident  had  the  duty  of  readjusting  the  taxes  in  1851, 
after  some  had  been  abolished.  He  raised  the  tax  on 
occupations  sixfold  in  one  year,  and  interfered  in  the 
native  land  tenure  to  effect  an  arbitrary  equalization  of 
holdings  ;  next  year  he  was  given  another  place,  and 
an  attempt  was  made  to  undo  all  the  mischief  that  he  had 
caused.^ 

European  officials  enjoyed  not  only  the  culture  percent- 
ages in  addition  to  their  salaries,  but  also  many  illicit 
sources  of  income.  Unchecked  by  any  strict  control,  they 
disregarded  government  injunctions  and  lived  off  the 
land  and  labor  of  the  people  they  were  set  to  govern. 
They  followed  the  example  set  them  in  the  culture  system 
and  demanded  labor  services  and  products  from  the  people 
for  nothing,  or  for  a  slight  return.  They  travelled  about 
the  country  with  the  pomp  and  retinue  of  petty  Oriental 
despots,  spending  sometimes  days  or  weeks  in  sybaritic 
life  at  the  inns  —  all  at  the  expense  of  the  natives.^ 

The  native  officials  of  Java  have  always  displayed  more 
aptitude  for  acquiring  the  vices  than  the  virtues  of  their 
European  rulers,  and  they  showed,  as  was  to  be  expected, 
the  bad  effects  of  the  examples  set  them  during  the  time 

1  "Wat  de  Javaansche  maatschappij  al  nlet  verdragen  kan,"  TNI.,  1861, 
23  :  2  :  287-298.  I  presume  this  article  to  have  been  written  by  Van 
Hoevell,  who  generally  did  not  sign  his  articles  in  the  Tijdschrift. 

2  See  especially  the  details  in  Van  Soest,  KS.,  3:  177  ff.  The  dissolute 
life  of  some  of  the  residents  is  described  by  Vitalis,  Misbruiken,  p.  249, 
and  he  gives  instances  of  the  abuse  of  the  natives  for  the  selfish  ends  of 
officials.  Van  Hoevell,  "Batig  Slot,"  TNI.,  1850,  12  :  1  :  139,  quotes  an 
experienced  official  as  saying  that  a  European  official,  when  building  a 
house,  paid  money  only  for  his  European  materials  ;  he  would  require  of 
the  people  labor,  stone,  wood,  tiles,  lime,  etc.,  without  remuneration.  I 
do  not  touch  on  such  bits  of  scandal  as  can  be  found,  e.g..,  in  Max  Have- 
laar,  p.  132. 


via  THE   CULTURE   SYSTEM:    GOVERNMENT  297 

when  the  culture  system  was  in  operation.  The  result 
was  the  more  harmful,  as  one  consequence  of  the  system 
was  a  very  material  increase  in  their  power.  The  Dutch 
had  never  touched  more  than  the  fringe  of  the  social 
organization  in  Java.  They  had  governed  from  the  out- 
side through  the  agency  of  Javanese  officials,  and  only 
these  had  the  knowledge  necessary  to  control  the  natives 
under  the  varying  local  conditions.  The  Dutch  knew 
what  they  wanted  when  they  established  the  culture  sys- 
tem, but  they  had  to  go  to  the  native  officials  to  find  out 
how  to  get  it ;  the  administration  broke  down  when  it  was 
a  question  of  direct  contact  with  the  individual  natives, 
or  with  the  village  head-men,  a  question  of  the  distribu- 
tion of  tasks  or  the  like.  Even  the  minor  European  offi- 
cials, the  controleurs,  had  to  depend  on  the  statements  of 
native  officials  for  their  information,  and  had  to  leave  the 
execution  of  orders  to  these  same  natives. ^ 

Money 2  speaks  of  the  "different  lines  marked  out  for 
each  race,  according  to  their  peculiar  requirements — gain 
for  the  European,  power  for  the  native  "  —  and  he  de- 
scribes in  this  case  correctly  the  result  to  which  the  cul- 
ture system  led.  Van  den  Bosch  proposed  to  secure  the 
adherence  of  the  ruling  class  of  natives,  the  regents,  by 
giving  back  to  them  the  position  and  part  of  the  power 
that  they  had  enjoyed  before  the  Dutch  and  English  had 
reduced  them  to  the  place  of  officials.  To  increase  their 
prestige   they  were  turned  again  into  semi-independent 

iNota,  1852,  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  3:327;  Alphen,  "Kennis  van 
Indie,"  De  Gids,  1867,  1  :  493.  Alphen  says  that  the  manager  of  a  sugar 
factory  learned  more  about  the  people  than  a  controleur,  in  one-third  of 
the  time.  Natives  were  always  suspicious  of  officials,  and  if  they  told 
them  anything,  were  likely  to  conceal  or  pervert  the  truth. 

2  Java,  1 :  47. 


298  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

rulers,  with  grants  of  land  to  furnish  them  with  dues  in 
labor  and  kind  as  under  the  old  regime,  and  with  a  native 
militia  for  a  bodyguard,  strong  enough  to  impose  upon 
the  people,  but  so  weak  that  it  need  never  be  a  menace  to 
the  government.  In  return  they  were  to  lend  to  the  gov- 
ernment their  knowledge  and  their  influence  in  getting 
what  was  wanted  from  the  native  population. ^  The  pol- 
icy of  the  government  was  at  first  to  restrict  these  land 
grants  to  the  highest  class  of  native  rulers,  the  regents, 
but  many  of  the  subordinate  natives  secured  similar  privi- 
leges in  time. 2  The  grant  of  land  implied  the  right  also 
to  tax  the  natives  on  the  land ;  the  Dutch  government 
abdicated  its  duties  and  turned  the  people  over  to  the 
native  chiefs.  The  results  can  be  imagined.  The  con- 
troleur  of  Demak  described  them  as  they  showed  them- 
selves in  his  territory.  The  year  after  the  grant  was 
made  the  people  of  the  village  affected  went  to  him  and 

1  For  a  summary  of  this  policy,  see  Van  Soest,  KS.,  2  :  82  ff. ;  for  de- 
tails, S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  2  :  141,  201,  249.  Merkus,  Nota,  1831  (ih., 
2  :  211),  favored  the  policy  of  payment  in  land,  though  he  recognized  the 
objections.  A  good  excuse  was  the  fact  that  the  system  of  money  salaries 
had  never  been  carried  out  completely  ;  it  was  notorious  that  the  regents 
still  enjoyed  the  revenues  of  much  land. 

2  According  to  the  original  proposal  all  native  oflScials  could  have  enjoyed 
land  revenues  instead  of  money  ;  S.  van  Deventer  (LS. ,  2  :  499)  thinks 
that  the  government  applied  the  system  only  to  the  regents  because  it  had 
not  so  much  need  of  the  support  of  other  classes.  For  evidence  that  all 
the  native  officials  shared  in  the  land  grants,  see  z'6.,  3  :  183,  a  grant  to  a 
subordinate  native  official,  1843,  of  "  one  or  more  desas,''  to  secure  his 
good-will ;  ih.,  3 :  162  a  statement  of  the  "  appanage  "  fields  in  Probolingo, 
1857,  showing  that  minor  officials  held  a  large  amount.  The  old  abuse  of 
farming  out  the  revenues  of  villages  reappeared  ;  in  one  case  a  Dutchman 
farmed  the  land-tax  of  a  village,  and  made  it,  of  course,  much  heavier. 
Eindresum^,  2  :  228,  note  c.  Other  cases  of  this  evil  practice,  in  which 
Chinese,  Europeans,  even  government  officials,  appear  as  tax  farmers,  are 
given  by  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  2  :  644. 


VIII  THE   CULTURE   SYSTEM:    GOVERNMENT  299 

begged  to  be  freed  from  the  impositions  that  the  regent 
was  laying  upon  them ;  the  next  year  they  reappeared 
with  the  same  petition.  He  could  do  nothing,  and  in  spite 
of  many  similar  representations  the  Dutch  government  in 
Java  would  do  nothing. ^  Down  to  the  time  of  its  aboli- 
tion, in  1867,  the  system  of  land  grants  in  lieu  of  salaries 
remained  a  great  source  of  oppression ;  the  best  European 
officials  protested  against  it,  and  there  was  one  case  even 
in  which  a  native  Javanese  regent  denounced  it  for  its 
abuses,  and  refused  to  be  a  party  to  it.^ 

At  the  same  time  it  is  possible  to  exaggerate  the  direct 
effect  of  these  land  grants;  until  within  a  short  time 
before  Bosch  came  to  the  head  of  the  government  they 
had  been  permitted,  and  even  when  they  had  been  abol- 
ished in  theory  it  was  known  that  the  practice  they  repre- 
sented continued  to  exist.  I  should  say  that  the  open 
recognition  of  them  now  by  the  government  was  impor- 
tant chiefly  as  an  index  of  its  general  spirit,  its  willing- 
ness to  free  itself  from  all  responsibility  for  the  welfare 
of  the  natives  so  long  as  its  treasury  was  filled.  This 
spirit  corrupted  the  essence  of  government ;  it  permeated 
in  the  most  subtle  way  all  parts  of  the  European  and 
native  administration.  One  most  important  manifestation 
of  it  was  the  parsimony  shown  in  the  scale  of  salaries 
paid  to  the  native  officials.  These  salaries  were  not  only 
insufficient  to  guarantee  good  service  on  the  part  of  the 
subordinate  native  officials;  they  were  not  sufficient  even 
to  support  life  on  the  standard  to  which  natives  of  the 

1 S.  van  De venter,  LS.,  2  :  458  ff. 

2  See  the  description  of  this  case  by  Van  Hoevell,  "  Het  bezoldigen  van 
inlandsche  hoofden  in  sawahs  der  bevolking,"  TNI.,  1857,  19:  1  :  287, 
with  a  general  criticism  of  the  system. 


300  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

official  class  were  used.  The  officials  as  a  matter  of  course 
made  up  the  deficit  by  exactious  imposed  on  the  natives, 
and  the  government,  forced  to  recognize  the  necessity  of 
such  exactions,  liad  no  ability  to  hold  them  within  bounds.^ 
After  the  description  that  has  been  given  of  the  abuses  of 
native  rule,  and  after  the  examples  that  have  been  given 
to  show  what  liberties  even  the  European  officials  allowed 
themselves  in  the  period  of  the  culture  system,  it  will  be 
necessary  only  to  suggest  the  oppressions  of  the  native 
officials.  Every  demand  of  the  European  government 
increased  as  it  passed  through  their  hands.  They  multi- 
plied tenfold  and  more  the  demands  which  the  govern- 
ment in  theory  allowed  them  to  make  on  the  labor  services 
of  the  population.2  A  Dutch  official  describes  how  they 
not  only  taxed  the  people  for  rice,  but  traded  as  well  in 
this  chief  food  staple,  growing  fat  off  the  necessities  of 
the  people  in  time  of  want,  and  imposing  useless  labors 
on  them  at  the  height  of  f amine. ^  Another  official,  who 
was  instrumental  in  bringing  on  the  final  reform,  asserted 

1  When  Baud  made  his  journey  of  inspection,  1834,  he  found  that  all 
the  district  head-men  of  Cheribon  (getting  a  salary  of  fl.  25  a  month)  used 
improper  means  for  increasing  their  incomes  ;  the  government  winked  at 
it.  S.  van  Deventer,  LS. ,  2  :  632.  When  Van  Deventer  published  his  col- 
lection (1865),  the  salary  of  these  officials  was  still  in  many  cases  fl.  25. 
The  spirit  of  the  government  in  this  period  may  be  illustrated  by  the  fact 
that,  in  one  case  at  least,  to  stimulate  sugar  culture,  it  discharged  the  reg- 
ular native  officials  and  replaced  them  by  Chinese  —  men  who  in  such  a 
position  would  be  perfect  bloodsuckers.  LS.,  2  :  635.  See  in  general,  on 
the  inadequacy  of  the  salaries,  the  report  of  the  resident  of  Samarang,  1852, 
printed  in  TNI.,  1865,  3:1:  131-138  ("De  belasting  in  heerediensten  en 
landrenten  op  Java ").  In  the  same  volume  is  an  extract  from  a  Batavian 
newspaper,  which  said  that  a  district  head  needed  three  times  his  salary 
(fl.  50)  for  his  support ;  ib.,  p.  252. 

2  Alphen,  Kennis,  Gids,  1867,  1 :  494. 

8  See  the  description  in  TNI.,  1855,  17  :  2  :  79  ff. ;  S.  van  Deventer,  LS., 
3 :  185.     The  assistant  resident  was  ignorant  and  unable  to  control  abuses. 


vin  THE   CULTURE   SYSTEM:  GOVERNMENT  301 

that  he  had  personal  knowledge  of  twenty-three  cases  in 
one  month  in  which  natives  had  been  robbed  of  their 
buffaloes  by  the  regent.^  The  land-tax,  even  the  culture 
services,  might  be  reasonable  in  any  district,  and  yet  the 
natives  might  be  brought  to  absolute  destitution  by  the 
extortions  of  men  of  their  own  race. 

Dutch  officials  took  a  special  oath  to  protect  the  natives 
against  their  own  chiefs,  but  even  when  they  were  zealous 
and  intelligent,  they  could  accomplish  little  in  face  of  the 
selfish  apathy  of  the  government.  According  to  an  offi- 
cial report  dating  from  the  later  period  of  the  culture 
system, 2  the  subordinate  European  (or  half-breed)  ofii- 
cials  vied  with  each  other  at  first  in  hunting  out  abuses 
on  the  part  of  native  heads,  partly  from  a  sense  of  duty, 
partly  from  arrogance  and  a  dislike  of  the  native  officials. 
.The  government  had  so  many  complaints  to  investigate 
that  it  instructed  its  officials  to  show  less  zeal ;  they  went 
to  the  other  extreme,  and  let  complainants  sit  at  their 
doors  unheard  until  their  resources  were  gone,  or  sent 
them  away  with  threats.  It  became  proverbial  that  the 
government  would  rather  dismiss  ten  residents  than  one 
regent,  and  every  excuse  was  sought  to  cover  up  unpleas- 
ant occurrences  that  might  lead  to  trouble.  The  career 
of  the  author  of  Max  Havelaar,  who,  with  all  his  faults, 
was  an  honest  official,  shows  how  discouraging  were 
attempts  to  redress  the  wrongs  of  the  common  people.^ 
The   apathy   of    the    Dutch   government   was   the   more 

1  Dekker,  MH.,  189.  See  other  instances  of  oppression  in  S.  van  De- 
venter,  LS. ,  2  :  643. 

2Nota,  1852,  S.  van  Deventer,  L.S.,  3  :  323. 

sDekker's  story,  told  in  MH.,  227-228,  241  ff.,  may  be  misleading  in 
detail,  but  the  fact  remains  that  he  was  forced  out  of  the  service  for  insist- 
ing on  the  punishment  of  the  illegal  acts  of  a  native  regent. 


302  THE  DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

serious,  as  a  just  charge  against  a  native  official  could  be 
proved  only  with  great  difficulty.  The  common  people 
were  terror-stricken  when  it  came  to  the  point  of  testify- 
ing against  their  superiors,  and  the  native  officials  were 
themselves  all  banded  together  to  support  abuses.  ^ 

In  tracing  the  effect  of  Dutch  policy  in  the  period  of  the 
culture  system  we  have  reached  the  last  link  in  the  chain 
of  institutions,  the  village  government.  This  institution, 
the  lowest  of  all  and  the  least  known  to  the  Europeans, 
was  at  the  same  time  the  most  important.  It  was  the 
medium  through  which  all  orders  of  European  and  native 
officials  reached  the  common  laborers.  "We  can  exert 
influence  on  the  Javanese  in  no  other  way  than  through 
it,"  wrote  a  Dutch  official.^  Given  the  slight  develop- 
ment of  the  upper  administration,  which  made  subject 
to  each  official,  even  of  the  lower  native  orders,  a  large . 
area  and  a  numerous  population,  the  village  government 
became  the  most  important  organ  of  administration;  on 
it  depended  directly  millions  of  people  who  scarcely  ever 
saw  an  official  of  any  considerable  rank. 

Of  one  effect  of  the  culture  system  upon  the  internal 
organization  of  the  village,  it  is  possible  to  speak  with 
certainty,  because  its  traces  are  still  apparent.  The  gov- 
ernment  could   carry  out   its   purpose   of   changing   the 

1  See  the  account  in  "  Een  voorbeeld  ..."  TNI.,  1855,  17  :  2  :  87,  of  the 
way  in  which  the  native  officials  secured  positions  for  their  relatives,  and 
built  up  "rings."  An  instance  is  given  of  a  regent  who  secured  the 
change  of  a  district  head  four  times  in  six  years,  until  he  finally  got  his 
brother-in-law  into  the  place.  It  was  absurd  for  Money  (1  :  228)  to  talk 
of  the  native  officials  being  kept  honest  by  "  public  opinion." 

2  Mem.  of  Van  Sevenhoven,  1840,  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  3  :  105.  The 
proposal  of  the  resident  of  Cheribon,  1838  {ib.,  3  :  92),  to  diminish  the 
power  of  village  governments  and  if  possible  to  abolish  them,  was  a  wild 
idea. 


viii  THE  CULTURE   SYSTEM:    GOVERNMENT  303 

direction  and  amount  of  production  in  Java  only  as  it 
reached  the  landed  population,  and  to  reach  that  class  it 
had  to  work  through  the  village  organization ;  it  could 
not  deal  with  individual  peasants.  There  was  a  pressure 
from  above  to  maintain  the  communal  system  of  land 
tenure  and  to  extend  it  at  the  cost  of  villagers  whose  land 
had  become  individual  and  hereditary  property.  The 
village  strove  to  bring  under  its  control  all  land  that  it 
could  get  to  satisfy  the  government  demands.  Claims  to 
individual  rights  disappeared  with  the  decrease  in  the 
individual  interests  and  voluntary  labor  of  the  natives. 
In  spite  of  an  abundance  of  free  land  the  population 
heaped  itself  up  in  the  villages,  to  divide  the  burdens 
among  more  families,  and  the  land  share  of  each  family 
grew  smaller  and  smaller.  An  investigation  into  the 
land  tenures  of  the  residency  of  Cheribon  showed  that  the 
system  of  clearing  right  was  once  nearly  universal  there, 
and  that  remnants  of  individual  and  hereditary  property 
rights  were  to  be  found  nearly  everywhere,  but  that  the 
system  had  been  in  large  part  destroyed  by  the  introduc- 
tion of  the  sugar  and  indigo  cultures,  and  had  given 
way  to  the  communal  system.  In  a  number  of  villages 
natives  testified  that  their  forefathers  had  owned  the  rice- 
fields  as  private  property,  but  they  had  been  converted 
into  communal  property  by  command  of  the  govern- 
ment. A  later  investigation  (1878)  in  the  same  district 
showed  that  communal  land  tenure  was  retained  most 
generally  in  the  districts  of  the  sugar  culture.^ 

1  Communal  land  tenure  in  Java  is  not  an  aboriginal  institution  as 
supposed  by  Laveleye  and  others  ;  it  represents  a  modification  of  indi- 
vidual tenure  by  government  influence,  and  hence  resembles  the  Russian 
mir  (cf.  Simkhowitsch,  "Die  Ftldgemeinschaft  in  Russland,"  Jena, 
1898).    While  this,  I  think,  can  be  held  to  be  absolutely  certain  since  the 


304  THE  DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

Dutch  fiscal  policy  affected  not  only  the  native  land 
tenure,  the  natural  basis  of  village  institutions,  but  the 
village  government  as  well,  that  Baud  had  called  ^  "  the 
palladium  of  peace  in  Java."  The  head-men  of  the  vil- 
lage governments  got  a  great  increase  in  power  with  the 
growth  of  fiscal  demands ;  their  knowledge  of  local  con- 
ditions made  them  indispensable  both  to  European  and 
native  ofiicials,  and  made  them  final  arbiters  in  appor- 
tioning taxes  and  tasks.  They  shared  also  in  the 
percentages  and  premiums  set  by  the  government  to 
stimulate  zeal  in  the  collection  of  revenue. ^  On  the 
whole,  however,  the  district  head  seems  to  have  been 
the  last  in  the  hierarchy  of  officials  who  represented  the 
interests  of  the  Dutch  treasury  and  gained  by  his  con- 
publication  of  the  ample  evidence  in  the  Eindresum^,  some  points  in  the 
rise  of  communal  tenure  are  still  obscure.  The  land-tax  worked  with  the 
culture  system  to  bring  about  the  change  ;  the  fiscal  demands  of  the  gov- 
ernment, expressed  either  in  tax  or  cultures,  were  the  motive  force. 
This  place  is  unsuited  to  the  discussion  in  detail  of  a  question  which 
belongs  in  the  general  history  of  institutions.  For  the  statements  in  the 
text  see  Van  Soest,  1:145;  Gelpke,  "  l)e.sabestuur,"  Ind.  Gids,  1879, 
2  :  140  ;  Veth,  "  Het  cultuurwet,"  Gids,  1866,  1  :  287-290  ;  Van  Gorkom, 
"Kegeling  der  landrente,"  Gids,  1879,  3  :  50.  Further  details  and  refer- 
ences in  Pierson,  144  ff.  The  government  showed  no  respect  whatever  for 
property  rights  of  the  natives,  when  they  stood  in  the  way  of  a  reorgani- 
zation that  would  be  suited  to  a  supply  of  export  products.  The  inhab- 
itants of  one  village  were  made  to  plant  indigo  on  the  lands  of  another, 
lest  the  home  population  should  spare  its  land.  Nearly  every  village  in 
Cheribon  had  land  enclave,  in  the  land  of  another  village,  when  Van  Gor- 
kom wrote  ;  old  inhabitants  testified  that  this  was  the  result  of  the  indigo 
culture.  When  a  village  had  no  land  fit  for  indigo,  pieces  were  assigned 
to  it  elsewhere,  and  these  were  kept  later.  See  examples  in  Eindre- 
sum6,  2  :  65,  72,  186,  200,  Bijl.  55.  The  persistence  of  communal  land 
tenure  and  the  scattering  of  the  lands  of  a  village  are  great  hindrances  to 
production  and  administration  at  the  present  day. 

1  Baud  to  Governor  General,  1840,  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  3  :  94. 

2  Cf.  S.  van  Deventer,  2  :  721  (coffee)  ;  750  (land-tax). 


VIII  THE   CULTUEE    SYSTEM:    GOVEENMENT  805 

nection  with  the  administration.  The  village  head-men 
were  on  the  other  side  of  the  cleft  between  Dutch  and 
native  interests,  and  the  increased  power  and  emoluments 
that  the  system  gave  them  did  not  recompense  them  for 
the  precarious  position  in  which  they  were  put  by  being 
identified  with  the  producing  class.  If  the  village  did 
not  supply  all  that  was  demanded  of  it,  the  head-man 
was  punished  for  its  failure. ^ 

In  the  liberal  period  that  preceded  the  introduction  of 
the  culture  system  the  principle  was  accepted  that  the 
villages  should  have  perfect  freedom  in  the  choice  of 
their  heads,  and  that  elections  could  be  nullified  by  the 
resident  only  for  specific  reasons,  and  with  the  approval 
of  the  Governor  General.  After  about  1840  deposition 
became  the  common  punishment  for  head-men  who  were 
not  successful  in  extorting  what  the  government  desired. 
The  right  to  a  free  election  became  nothing  but  a  form,  and 
men  became  village  heads  because  they  seemed  fit  tools 
to  their  Dutch  superiors,  or  because  they  were  willing  to 

1  In  S.  van  Deventer,  1  :  419,  a  statistical  account  is  given  of  the  num- 
ber of  liead-men  punished  in  one  residency  in  the  period  1836-1840  ;  the 
figures  for  the  different  years  show  a  constant  increase,  68,  154,  222,  281, 
275.  Van  Soest,  3  :  197,  says  that  the  culture  system  was  maintained  by 
a  systematic  "terreur,"  by  all  kinds  of  punishments.  They  ranged  from 
simple  arrest  and  confinement  in  the  stocks  as  long  as  a  fortnight  to 
beatings  and  barbarous  Eastern  tortures.  Men  were  bound  for  a  day 
to  the  cross  with  the  face  turned  toward  the  sun,  were  dragged  at  the 
tails  of  horses,  were  kept  all  night  in  water,  and  so  forth.  Pierson  finds 
a  subject  for  grim  humor  in  the  report  of  a  resident  who,  after  speaking 
of  the  binding  of  men  to  bamboos  in  the  sun,  says  that  "  in  spite  of  these 
expedients"  the  opposition  to  the  system  grew  no  less.  Baud  forbade 
the  use  of  the  rod  for  the  punishment  of  village  chiefs  without  judicial 
sanction,  but  the  prohibition,  though  repeated  later,  was  never  observed. 
The  use  of  beatings  to  increase  production  was  abolished  by  Van  der  Putte 
in  1865. 


306  THE  DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

pay  for  the  place  and  the  promise  of  profit  it  held  out 
to  an  unscrupulous  taskmaster.  A  "trade  in  village 
officers  "  arose.  I  quote  from  the  report  of  the  Inspector 
of  Cultures,  Van  der  Poel,  1850.1  "In  this  way  are 
chosen  to  be  village  heads  all  kinds  of  men,  who,  for  the 
most  part  supported  by  the  authority  of  the  State,  are  in 
a  position,  it  is  true,  to  have  orders  executed,  but  who 
on  the  least  occasion  become  unserviceable,  since,  not 
belonging  to  the  class  of  men  who  are  born  on  purpose, 
as  it  were,  to  enter  the  village  government  in  Java,  they 
have  no  moral  influence.  A  great  deal  is  overlooked  so 
long  as  a  village  head  simply  pays  good  attention  to  the 
European  cultures,  and  as  it  happens  not  infrequently 
that  a  village's  share  in  the  cultures  far  exceeds  the 
strength  of  the  inhabitants,  but  nevertheless  the  work 
turns  out  well  and  satisfies  the  European  officials,  it  may 
easily  be  conceived  that  the  heads  of  such  villages  get 
power  beyond  the  others.  Now  this  favor  denotes,  not 
money  rewards,  presents,  or  honors,  but  simply  a  repre- 
hensible overlooking  of  irregularities,  for  it  has  often 
happened  that  the  village  heads,  having  embezzled  half 
or  two-thirds  of  the  land-tax  (300  or  400  gulden),  are 
simply  relieved  of  their  functions,  only  to  be  reinstated 
under  another  name  after  two  or  three  years." 

Another  report,^  based  on  this  of  Van  der  Poel's, 
said  that  three-fourths  of  the  traditional  class  of  village 
heads  had  disappeared,  and  that  the  office  was  held  by 

1  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  3  :  283  ff. 

2S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  3  :  Bijlage  D.,  p.  327.  Compare  vyith  these 
accounts  that  given  by  an  ex-official  in  TNI.,  1873,  2:1:  134.  He  thought 
that  the  lower  classes  fared  better  under  the  new  heads,  but  lost  in  that 
the  members  of  the  old  "  patriarchal  "  families  were  set  against  them  and 
would  not  help  them  in  time  of  need. 


VIII  THE   CULTURE   SYSTEM:   GOVERNMENT  307 

people  of  the  lowest  class,  who  had  suffered  every  punish- 
ment but  death.  The  people  had  given  up  the  attempt 
to  secure  good  heads,  finding  it  better  to  yield  and  get 
a  share  of  the  money  used  for  buying  votes. 

It  is  impossible  to  describe  the  exact  effects  of  the  culture 
system  upon  the  relations  of  head-men  to  villagers,  and 
of  villagers  to  each  other ;  they  will  never  be  known,  for 
they  were  not  known  to  the  Dutch  at  the  time.  The 
government  in  the  Netherlands  wanted  money,  and 
sent  word  to  Java  to  furnish  products,  to  furnish  more 
products.  The  impulse  was  transmitted  through  the 
different  officials  until  at  last  it  reached  the  native  who 
produced  the  products,  but  beyond  a  certain  point  the 
Dutch  could  not  follow  or  control  it.  They  could  repeat 
the  shock,  and  more  violently,  if  they  were  kept  waiting 
for  the  desired  reaction,  but  they  could  not  determine  its 
impact  upon  the  individual  natives.  It  is  probable,  from 
what  is  known  of  the  nature  of  village  governments,  that 
the  cases  of  injustice  and  oppression  in  the  workings  of 
the  culture  system  that  were  brought  to  the  notice  of  the 
Dutch  and  put  on  record  were  as  nothing  compared  with 
tyrannies  and  extortions  by  petty  officials,  by  the  com- 
paratively well-to-do,  by  village  cliques,  wrought  inside 
the  villages  and  never  known  to  the  outside  world.  "The 
little  man  never  makes  open  complaint,"  said  a  native 
witness  at  an  investigation  in  1850,  when  asked  why  the 
gross  abuses  discovered  had  not  sooner  been  brought  to 
the  attention  of  the  government.  The  native  bore  his 
sufferings  in  silence,  and  it  was  mainly  by  unconscious 
manifestations  of  his  distress,  by  famine  and  pestilence, 
by  flight  from  the  land,  that  the  government  came  in  time 
to  realize  the  faults  of  the  system. 


308  THE  DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap,  viii 

The  veil  that  overhung  the  workings  of  the  village 
government  was  lifted  from  time  to  time  by  some  zealous 
official,  and  the  picture  presented  seems  always  to  have 
been  the  same  —  corruption  and  selfish  oppression.  The 
head-man  used  his  power  so  far  as  he  dared  for  his  own 
interests ;  he  shared  it  when  he  had  to,  but  only  with  the 
rich.  The  burden  of  taxes  and  services  fell  mainly  on 
the  poorer  classes  ;  the  rewards  for  products  furnished 
went  mainly  to  those  with  political  influence,  who  had 
done  no  work.  The  villager  who  did  not  meet  the 
demands  of  his  petty  government  was  sold  out ;  even  his 
wife  and  children  could  be  taken  from  him  to  work  in 
the  house  of  the  village  tyrant  and  leave  him  tortured 
with  jealousy  and  driven  to  crime.  ^ 

1  It  seems  unnecessary  to  describe  in  detail  the  abuses  suffered  under 
the  village  governments.  Material  for  a  description  will  be  found  espe- 
cially in  the  third  volume  of  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.  (78,  105,  258  ff.,  266  ff., 
283,  etc.).  See  also  Vitalis,  "  Misbruiken  in  de  administratie  op  Java," 
TNI.,  1851, 13  :  2  :  246  ff.  ;  and  "  Een  voorbeeldvan  de  bescherming  ..." 
TNI.,  1855,  17:2:80. 


CHAPTER  IX 

THE  CULTURE  SYSTEM:  REFORM 

rMHE  main  object  in  view  in  the  institution  of  the  cul- 
-■-  ture  system  was  attained  by  it,  and  a  net  profit  was 
sent  each  year  to  the  home  government  that  soon  exceeded 
the  anticipations  even  of  the  founder.  The  exact  amount 
of  the  surplus  will  never  be  known,  for  some  of  the  statis- 
tics were  falsified  and  some  are  lacking,  but  there  is  an  esti- 
mate by  the  best  authority  on  finance  in  the  Netherlands, 
N.  G.  Pierson,  covering  the  most  important  part  of  the 
period  of  operation  of  the  system,  that  can  be  accepted  as 
a  close  approximation  to  the  truth.  The  estimate  makes 
the  net  profit  of  the  S3'stem  22,333,000  gulden  a  year  from 
1840  to  1874,  a  total  profit  of  about  781,000,000  gulden.i 
Over  four-fifths  of  the  total  came  from  one  crop,  coffee, 

1  Pierson,  KP.,  148.  For  criticism  of  the  figures  published  by  the  gov- 
ernment as  representing  the  profits  of  the  culture  system,  see  Piccardt,  CS., 
93  ;  "  De  fiuanciele  resultaten  van  's  Gouvernements  landbouw  en  handel," 
TNI.,  1853,  15  :  2  : 1-7  ;  "  Over  de  Gouvernements  peper  cultuur  op  Java," 
TNI.,  1862,  24:2:335  ff.  ;  Rees,  Hervorming,  lud.  Gids,  1885,  1:740. 
The  figures  given  by  different  authors  vary  widely,  according  to  the  period 
chosen  and  the  way  in  which  government  statistics  are  interpreted. 
C.  Th,  Deventer,  "Een  eereschuld,"  Gids,  1899,  3:253,  bases  on  the 
previous  studies  of  De  Waal  and  N.  P.  van  den  Berg  an  estimate  that  the 
actual  surplus  of  government  revenue  for  the  period  1831-1866  was  fl.  498,- 
000,000.  The  Indian  surplus  enabled  the  Dutch  to  diminish  the  interest 
charge  on  their  debt  by  two-fifths  and  to  spend  hundreds  of  millions  on 
railroads.  Piccardt,  CS.,  154.  Piccardt  shows  that  the  Dutch  were  en- 
couraged to  run  into  debt  by  the  profits  from  the  Eastern  dependencies. 
lb.,  105. 

309 


310  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

and  of  the  remaining  cultures,  bringing  in  fl.  142,000,000, 
sugar  alone  gave  fl.  115,000,000.  It  is  apparent  that  the 
system  failed  as  a  system  even  in  respect  to  the  one  point 
of  net  surplus.  It  could  introduce  cultures,  but  could  not 
maintain  them  unless  they  were  so  well  suited  to  the  nat- 
ural conditions  of  the  country  and  the  needs  of  the  market 
that  the  advantages  of  land  and  climate  overcame  the  dis- 
advantages of  forced  labor  and  government  management. 
The  government  actually  lost  on  many  crops  for  a  number 
of  years. ^  And  its  greatest  success,  the  coffee  culture,  was 
so  profitable,  not  because  of  good  management  on  its  own 
part  or  good  cultivation  on  the  part  of  the  native,  but 
because  of  the  change  of  the  price  of  coffee  in  Europe,  for 
which  it  was  in  no  way  responsible. ^ 

It  has  been  asserted  that  this  large  surplus  revenue  was 
really  a  burden  on  the  European  consumer  of  the  imported 
products,  rather  than  on  the  natives  of  the  Indies.^  The 
assertion  does  not  deserve  serious  consideration.  I  have 
shown  already  that  the  government  revenues  were  obtained 

1 1  have  already  spoken  of  the  losses  of  the  natives.     The  government 

made  them  bear  the  brunt  of  failures,  but  lost  itself  in  the  advances  made 

for  seed  and  labor,  in  the  investment  of  capital  in  factories,  etc.     Most  of 

the  minor  cultures  were  sources  of  loss  to  the  government  as  well  as  to 

*  the  natives. 

2  In  1848  the  government  sold  coffee  for  fl.  13.30  a  pikol  (133  lb.),  in 
1856  for  fl.  32.04;  deducting  its  expenses,  profit  was  fl.3.71  as  against 
fl.  27.75.  Woordenboek,  1:422.  With  the  amount  of  coffee  sold  annu- 
ally a  difference  of  one  cent  a  pound  made  a  difference  of  over  fl.  1 ,000,000 
in  revenue.  (Thurlow's  Report,  p.  371.)  Veth  shows  that  the  coffee 
crop  declined  both  in  quantity  and  in  quality  while  it  was  making  such 
large  additions  to  the  revenue.  "  Phases  der  bestrijding  van  het  kolouiale 
stelsel,"  De  Gids,  1869,  1  :  113. 

8  The  (English)  Economist,  Oct.  12,  1861,  p.  1127;  Money,  Java, 
1 :  45-50.  In  denying  this  I  do  not,  of  course,  pretend  that  differential 
and  protective  duties  did  not  hurt  the  Dutch  consumer. 


IX  THE   CULTURE   SYSTEM:    REFORM  311 

at  the  expense  of  incalculable  exertions  and  hardships  on 
the  part  of  the  subject  people.  It  would  not  be  necessary 
to  touch  on  this  point  again  if  supporters  of  the  culture 
system  had  not  so  persistently  urged  in  its  behalf  the 
statement  that  Java  really  increased  in  prosperity  during 
the  operation  of  the  system,  and  if  there  were  not  in  this 
statement  a  kernel  of  truth  likely  to  lead  the  student 
astray. 

The  question  to  be  resolved  is  a  double  one;  first,  whether 
Java  became  more  prosperous  in  the  period  1830-1860; 
second,  whether  the  prosperity  can  be  traced  to  the  action 
of  the  culture  system.  Taking  the  second  question  first, 
it  should  be  admitted  that  the  government  cultures  did 
not  work  hardship  in  the  case  of  every  individual  who 
was  subject  to  them.  When  some  of  the  oppressive  fea- 
tures of  the  system  had  been  reformed,  and  when  it  was 
applied  to  parts  of  Java  especially  suited  to  the  cultivation 
of  the  products  that  the  government  demanded,  natives 
might  gain  rather  than  lose  by  it.^  Pierson  has  shown 
that  in  some  parts  of  Java  the  culture  system  worked  like 
an  ordinary  money  tax,  as  the  cultivators  hired  laborers  to 
perform  the  services  for  them,  and  in  some  cases  received 
more  from  the  government  than  they  paid  in  wages. ^ 
While  it  would  be  idle  to  deny  that  the  culture  system 
worked  occasional  benefits,  I  have  already  shown  that  it 

1  This  seems  to  have  been  the  case  in  some  of  the  eastern  residencies 
vinder  the  reformed  sugar  culture.  See  Vitalis,  Misbruiken,  p.  252.  This 
evidence  is  the  more  valuable  because  Vitalis  was  a  bitter  opponent  of  the 
system  in  general,  and  it  is  confirmed  from  a  native  source  (Eindr., 
2  :  266,  Bezoeki ;  culture  services  were  not  oppressive  there).  The  evidence 
of  Hasselman  (Nota,  1846,  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  3:  226)  is  not  so  con- 
clusive as  to  conditions  in  Kediri. 

2  KP.,  139. 


312  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

was  oppressive  in  its  general  application;  and  even  in  the 
cases  in  which  natives  gained  by  a  culture,  there  was 
always  the  danger  that  some  chance  would  reverse  its 
fortunes  and  make  the  culture  a  serious  responsibility 
rather  than  a  resource  for  the  government. ^  Making 
every  allowance  for  cases  in  which  natives  gained  by  the 
culture  system,  leaving  out  of  account  every  objection 
that  can  be  urged  against  the  theory  of  the  system,  the 
action  of  the  Dutch  government  in  abolishing  it  seems 
amply  justified  by  the  known  evils  that  it  worked  in  the 
economical  and  political  organization. 

Granting,  however,  that  the  culture  system  was  bad, 
Java  may  still  have  grown  more  prosperous  in  the  period 
during  which  it  was  maintained.  As  has  been  shown  in 
an  earlier  chapter,  the  proportion  of  arable  land  occupied 
by  government  cultures  was  not  more  than  about  one- 
twentieth  of  the  whole.  The  burdens  of  the  cultures  may 
have  been  shifted  to  some  extent  on  natives  who  were  not 
directly  subject  to  them,  and  these  natives  may  yet  have 
maintained  or  improved  their  economic  position.  If  we 
accept  the  growth  of  population  as  a  rough  criterion  of 
welfare,  the  culture  system  seems  to  have  had  little  influ- 
ence, one  way  or  the  other,  on  the  increase  in  numbers. 
The  population  continued  to  grow,  as  every  Oriental  popu- 
lation will  grow  when  peace  is  assured  by  a  European 
government,  and  when  new  land  lies  ready  for  occupation. 
A  Dutch  official  wrote  about  1800,  "In  nearly  every  part 
of  this  beautiful  island  whole  stretches  of  fertile  land  lie 

1  Wallace,  Malay  Arch.,  251,  cites  the  inhabitants  of  Menado  as  great 
gainers  from  the  culture  system.  They  were  brought  up  in  the  debate  on 
the  Dutch  budget  in  1893  as  suffering  severely  from  the  decline  of  the 
coffee  culture,  and  the  government  was  forced  to  appropriate  money  for 
their  relief.     (De  Louter,  Handleiding,  388.) 


IX  THE   CULTURE   SYSTEM:    REFORM  313 

waste  and  fallow  for  lack  of  population."  Raffles  said 
that  in  seven-eighths  of  Java  the  soil  was  entirely  neglected 
or  only  half  cultivated,  while  the  people  lived  off  the 
remaining  eighth. ^  The  land  lay  waste  through  the  fault 
of  the  native  political  organization.  Under  such  condi- 
tions a  traveller's  statement  in  reference  to  one  of  the  East 
India  islands  held  true  in  regard  to  Java  also  ;  children 
were  regarded  as  a  source  of  income  rather  than  of  expense, 
and  the  necessity  of  supporting  a  family  was  no  obstacle 
to  early  marriage. ^  The  population  therefore  continued 
to  grow  during  the  period  of  the  culture  system  as  it  had 
grown  before  under  the  government  of  the  Dutch,  and  at 
about  the  same  rate.^ 

1  Wiese  on  Bericht,  Jonge,  Opk.,  13  :  87  ;  Raffles,  Hist.,  1 :  119 ;  Dirk 
van  Hogendorp,  Schets,  1799,  Eindr.,  2  Bijl.,  LL.,  154. 

2  A.  S.  Bickmore,  "Travels  in  the  East  Indian  Archipelago,"  N.Y., 
1869,  p.  278.  It  is  manifestly  unfair  to  compare  the  growth  of  popula- 
tion in  Java  and  Ceylon,  as  has  been  done  to  shovsr  the  benefit  of  the  cul- 
ture system.  The  soil  of  Ceylon  is  poor  in  comparison  with  that  of  Java. 
See  Sir  Samuel  W.  Baker,  "  Eight  Years'  Wanderings  in  Ceylon,"  Phila., 
1869.  Boys  recognizes  the  extraordinary  fertility  of  Java  as  the  main 
reason  why  the  Javanese  could  bear  up  under  the  culture  system. 
Java,  68. 

8  Bleeker  found  that  the  population  increased  in  the  period  1795-1830 
from  three  and  a  half  million  to  seven  million,  while  in  a  period  of  equal 
length  under  the  cultui'e  system,  1830-1865,  it  increased  from  seven  million 
to  fourteen  million.  "Nieuwe  bijdragen  tot  de  kennis  der  bevolkings- 
statistiek  van  Java,"  Bijd.  TLV.,  1869,  3:4:453.  Other  tables  by  the 
same  author  show  that  the  culture  system  had  little  effect  on  the  move- 
ment of  the  population  as  a  whole.  Exceptions  to  the  normal  growth  can 
be  found  both  before  and  during  the  culture  system.  In  the  period  of 
the  great  Java  war,  1824-1830,  the  increase  was  only  1.82%  a  year  ;  1845- 
1850,  in  a  period  of  epidemics  (partly  due  to  the  action  of  the  system), 
the  annual  increase  was  but  .021%;  id.,  "Over  de  bevolkings  toename 
op  Java,"  TNI.,  1863,  1:1:  193.  Leclerq,  "Java  et  le  syst^me  colonial 
des  Hollandais,"  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes,  November,  1897,  144  :  185,  says 
that  there  are  "numerous  proofs"  of  the  connection  of  the  system  with 
the  growth  of  population,  but  gives  nothing  to  substantiate  his  asser- 


314  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

If  we  seek  to  know  more  than  the  mere  number  of  the 
people  in  Java  at  different  times,  and  ask  what  was  the 
economic  status  of  individuals,  whether  the  standard  of 
living  rose  or  fell,  we  find  statisticians  ready  to  answer 
our  questions.  Statistical  material  is,  however,  notori- 
ously misleading  even  in  a  modern  state,  and  it  is  still 
less  satisfactory  as  a  basis  of  argument  when  it  applies 
to  a  half  mediaeval  society  such  as  that  of  Java.  So  far 
as  it  can  be  trusted  it  shows  a  decline  in  the  condition  of 
the  individual  native  about  the  middle  of  the  nineteeiith 
century,  but  it  tells  us  absolutely  nothing  about  the  share 
of  the  culture  system  in  influencing  this  decline.^ 

Leaving  aside  the  question  of  the  general  condition  of 
Java,  it  is  not  necessary  to  rely  upon  statistics  to  trace 
the  effects  of  the  culture  system.  The  forced  services 
proved  to  be  an  intolerable  burden  in  many  parts  of  the 

tion.  Pierson,  KP.,  75,  believes  that  the  communal  land  tenure,  induced 
in  part  by  the  government  cultures,  gave  an  unwholesome  stimulus  to  the 
multiplication  of  numbers.  I  have  seen  no  other  reasonable  suggestion 
as  to  how  the  system  could  have  furthered  the  increase  of  people  subject 
to  it.  Van  Soest,  KS.,  2  :  129,  gives  striking  examples  of  its  influence  in 
the  other  direction,  and  Wallace,  Malay  Arch.,  264,  unconsciously  suggests 
that  the  forced  cultures  caused  the  slow  increase  in  Menado,  Material 
for  a  detailed  study  of  the  growth  of  population  in  different  localities  can 
be  found  in  Bleeker's  articles  in  TNI.  for  1863  and  Bijd.  TLV.,  1867  and 
1869,  but  the  interpretation  of  this  material  in  connection  with  the  statis- 
tics of  cultures  would  require  an  extended  monogi'aph. 

1  See  especially  the  statistical  articles  by  W.  Bosch,  TNI.,  1857, 
19:  1 :  365  ff.  ;  19 : 2  :  348  ff.  ;  De  Economist,  1860,  343  ff.  ;  TNI.,  1865, 
3  : 1:  257  ff.  ;  1868,  2  :  1  :  21  ff.  This  last  was  written  in  reply  to  an  article 
by  Pierson,  De  Econ.,  1867,  315,  who  asserted  that  prosperity  increased 
under  the  culture  system,  though  not  necessarily  because  of  it.  Bosch 
attempts  to  prove  impoverishment  of  the  natives  by  the  per  capita  statis- 
tics of  taxes  and  of  the  consumption  of  rice,  salt,  piece-goods,  etc.  Bosch 
gives  at  least  enough  facts  to  disprove  absolutely  Money's  statements, 
Java,  1 :  308  ff. 


IX  THE   CULTURE   SYSTEM:    REJb^OKM  315 

island.  Despite  all  government  restrictions,  a  movement 
of  population  began  from  the  districts  in  which  the  system 
had  been  introduced  to  government  lands  not  subject  to 
it  and  to  the  lands  held  by  private  individuals.  Populous 
regions  lost  as  much  as  one-half  or  two-thirds  of  their 
inhabitants  through  emigration.  The  residency  of  Japara 
lost  in  the  first  half  of  the  year  1841  alone  over  two  thou- 
sand people,  who  were  escaping  from  the  burden  of  forced 
services.  Some  villages  came  to  have  no  other  inhabit- 
ants than  the  head-men. ^  Those  who  remained  at  home 
suffered  from  recurrent  famines  and  pestilences,  due  to 
the  diminished  food  supply.  The  natives  were  not  left 
time  or  land  enough  to  raise  their  food,  and  were  not 
given  wages  enough  to  buy  it.  That  the  government 
might  have  the  fields  earlier  for  sugar  cane,  the  cultiva- 
tors were  forced  to  plant  the  kinds  of  rice  that  matured 
earlier,  but  gave  a  smaller  crop  of  poorer  quality.  Many 
were  forced  to  subsist  on  wild  roots  and  herbs,  —  and  to 
remedy  matters  the  government  proposed  to  make  rice 
too  a  forced  culture.  In  the  famine  of  1849-1850  over  a 
third  of  a  million  people  died  in  central  Java,  in  one  of 
the  richest  parts  of  the  earth,  which  now  maintains  a 
population  that  has  doubled  in  numbers. ^ 

1  Summary  in  Van  Soest,  KS.,  3 :  204  ff. 

2  I  refer  again  to  Van  Soest,  KS.,  3  :  206-222,  for  a  summary  account 
of  the  famines.  One  would  hardly  expect  a  government  official  to  know 
the  difference  between  kinds  of  rice ;  oryza  sativa  returns  a  crop  of  25- 
fold,  but  needs  eight  or  nine  months  to  ripen,  while  oryza  praecox  ripens 
in  five  or  six  months,  and  returns  only  18-fold.  Scheuer,  "Mark  en  dessa," 
159.  "Pessimist"  describes, in  TNI.,  1873,  2:1:  130, the  famines  of  1858 
and  1862,  of  which  he  was  an  eye-witness.  People  lived  for  months  on 
the  roots  of  gadoeng,  a  plant  of  the  yam  family,  which  is  poisonous  if  not 
properly  prepared  ;  hunger  drove  many  to  eat  the  root  before  it  was  fit 
for  food. 


316  THE  DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

It  is  remarkable  that  no  armed  revolts  against  the 
system  ever  occurred.  From  time  to  time  the  natives  in 
one  place  or  another  protested  against  the  exactions  of 
the  government,  but  they  had  no  ability  to  organize  an 
opposition,  and  simply  fared  the  worse  for  their  show 
of  resistance.  As  the  Governor  General  cheerfully  re- 
marked in  1834,^  "  The  habit  of  subjection  and  obedience, 
so  especially  peculiar  to  the  Javanese,  makes  many  things 
possible  in  their  country  which  elsewhere  would  have  to 
contend  with  great  difficulties." 

Of  all  these  events  practically  nothing  was  known  at  the 
time  in  the  Netherlands.  No  government  industry  was 
ever  so  free  from  the  supervision  of  the  general  public,  or 
so  unchecked  by  the  public  criticism  that  keeps  govern- 
ments in  the  right  track,  as  was  the  culture  system.  The 
minister  of  the  colonies  was  the  only  man  in  the  Nether- 
lands who  could  know  the  real  state  of  affairs  in  the  East, 
and  he  was  responsible  to  the  king  alone,  determining  the 
colonial  policy  without  thought  of  popular  or  parliamen- 
tary opposition.  When  Raffles  was  looking  forward  to  the 
transfer  of  Java  to  Dutch  rule,  he  wrote  a  friend  that  he 
hoped  the  Javanese  would  be  as  happy  under  the  Dutch 
as  under  the  English,  if  not  happier.  "  I  say  happier 
because  Java  will,  in   importance,  be  more   to   Holland 

1  Baud's  Report,  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  2  :  677.  He  referred  to  a  rising 
of  sugar  cultivators  in  Soerabaya,  and  said  also,  "I  am  compelled  to 
doubt  whether  the  artisans  of  the  city  like  to  be  forced  to  work  almost 
continuously  in  the  government  establishments  for  less  than  they  can 
earn  from  private  persons,"  but  thought  an  increase  in  pay  was  question- 
able policy  "from  a  financial  standpoint."  There  was  a  rising  also  in 
Pasoeroean  at  this  time  ;  ib.,  2  :  583.  For  description  of  later  risings,  see 
ib.,S  :  131,  and  Pierson,  KP.,  122-127  (Cheribon,  1839)  ;  "  Hoe  de  resident 
van  Tagal  het  kultuurstelsel  op  de  been  houdt,"  TNI.,  1861,  23  :  2  :  164- 
170  (Tagal  sugar  culture,  1860  or  1861). 


IX  THE  CULTURE  SYSTEM:  REFORM         317 

than  she  could  ever  be  to  England."  ^  His  idea  that  Java 
would  receive  more  efficient  attention  from  the  small 
country  proved  a  delusion.  The  Dutch  fundamental  law 
of  1815  did  not  recognize  the  principle  of  the  responsi- 
bility of  ministers  to  the  legislative  body  ;  the  States 
General  itself  was  chosen  under  the  restrictions  of  a  nar- 
row suffrage  and  had  very  limited  powers.  The  Dutch 
had  no  chance  to  interest  themselves  in  their  colonies 
because  the  constitution  expressly  conferred  upon  the 
king  the  exclusive  right  of  control  in  the  State's  trans- 
marine dependencies,"  The  members  of  the  Dutch  Cham- 
bers acquiesced  in  this  arrangement  apparently  without 
thought  of  resistance  ;  more  than  once  after  1815  they 
emphasized  the  fact  that  it  was  not  their  business  to 
meddle  in  colonial  affairs.  The  royal  speeches  made  at 
the  opening  of  the  States  General,  and  to  be  found  in  De 
Waal's  collection,  contain  often  absolutely  no  reference 
to  colonial  affairs  ;  in  the  period  after  1830,  when  the 
great  changes  of  the  culture  system  were  in  progress,  the 
dry  statement  "  complete  quiet  prevailed  "  was  the  usual 
amount  of  information  given  the  legislators.  It  was  not 
until  1819  that  the  constitutional  provisions  regarding 
the  Dutch  budget  itself  were  carried  into  effect,  and  then 
the  "  ordinary  "  parts  of  the  budget  were  discussed  and 
revised  only  at  ten  year  intervals.^     A  member  of  the 

1  Memoir,  letter  to  Miiito,  July  2,  1814,  p.  228.  The  letter  is  misdated 
in  Egerton's  "Raffles." 

2  Art.  60  read  as  follows,  "  De  Koning  heeft  bij  uitsluiting  het  opper- 
bestuur  over  de  volkplantingen  en  bezittingen  van  het  Rijk  in  andere 
werelddeelen  ;  "  a  member  of  the  constitutional  convention  asked  whether 
this  included  legislative  power,  the  presiding  officer  said  yes,  and  there 
was  no  further  discussion.     De  Waal,  NISG.,  1 :  23,  27. 

8  De  Waal,  1 :  62.     Budgets  were  made  biennial  in  1841 ;  ib.,  3 :  162. 


318  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

States  General  complained,  in  1828,  that  when  he  and  his 
fellows  asked  about  the  colonial  budget,  they  were  told 
that  the  government  itself  did  not  know  its  details,  and 
left  its  revision  largely  to  the  Indian  administration ;  they 
got  only  general  statements  and  vague  promises  that  gave 
them  absolutely  no  idea  of  the  true  state  of  affairs.^  This 
very  member  became  minister  of  the  colonies  soon  after- 
ward but  made  no  change  of  importance  ;  the  colonial 
finances  came  to  the  attention  of  the  Dutch  legislature 
only  as  the  resulting  surplus  or  deficit  appeared  in  the 
Dutch  budget.2  Hogendorp  might  well  exclaim  that  the 
Dutch,  unlike  the  English,  had  neither  the  desire  to  make 
known  the  facts  about  their  Eastern  possessions,  nor  even 
the  desire  to  know  them  themselves.^ 

The  lack  of  knowledge  and  interest  on  the  part  of 
Chambers  and  people  was  the  more  natural  as  the  home 
government  was  itself  in  the  dark.  Van  den  Bosch  made 
secrecy  a  part  of  his  policy ;  he  justified  it  on  the  ground 
that  he  wished  to  preserve  the  system  from  knowledge  and 
application  by  other  nations,  but  he  kept  even  the  king 
ignorant  or  misinformed.*  As  Van  Soest  says,  one  man 
(Bosch)  ruled  the  system  up  to  1840  ;  after  that  tlie  system 
ruled  the  men.  Even  the  minister  of  the  colonies  had  only 
a  vague  and  often  perverted  idea  of  conditions  in  Java.^ 

1  Speech  of  Clifford,  1828,  De  Waal,  1 :  336 ;  his  speech  of  1826  (ib., 
1  :  204)  makes  much  the  same  complaint. 

2  See  the  budgets  1832-1834  ;  De  Waal,  2  :  21-26. 
8  Bijdragen,  1825,  quoted  in  De  Waal,  1  :  158. 

*  S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  2  :  612  ;  3  :  34,  .38.  Van  Soest  (KS.,  2  :  209) 
says  that  Bosch  "wound  himself  around"  King  William  I  and  gave  him 
a  false  idea  of  the  workings  of  the  system.  Men  who  favored  it  were 
given  royal  audiences  ;  others  were  kept  away. 

5  In  view  of  what  I  said  in  an  earlier  chapter  as  to  the  character  of 
official  reports  at  this  time,  it  is  not  surprising  to  learn  that  individuals 


IX  THE   CULTURE   SYSTEM:   REFORM  319 

Practically  no  one  outside  the  colonial  office  had  any 
knowledge  or  interest  concerning  colonial  affairs.  The 
few  pamphlets  attacking  the  government's  policy,  pub- 
lished in  the  Netherlands,  were  of  no  account  against  the 
glowing  financial  statements  that  the  government  could 
publish.  The  minister  of  the  colonies  received  the  reports 
of  all  officials  and  edited  them  before  they  were  laid 
before  the  king  or  made  known  to  the  public  ;  all  un- 
pleasant details  were  cut  out  that  the  ministerial  policy 
might  appear  in  the  best  light.  Java  was  jealously  closed 
to  the  individual  traveller ;  it  contained  few  Europeans 
who  were  not  directly  connected  with  public  administra- 
tion and  subject  to  its  discipline,  and  strict  press  regula- 
tions prevented  the  agitation  of  any  questions  that  could 
embarrass  the  government.  The  reading  public  in  the 
Netherlands  saw  little  that  was  not  meant  for  them ; 
news  "pour  I'Europe  "  was  a  stock  phrase  in  the  East 
for  touched-up  pictures  that  concealed  the  real  condition 
of  affairs.^ 

Restraint  of  the  press  by  law  was  superfluous,  as  the 
administrative  authority  of  the  colonial  government  was 
enough  to  prevent  the  publication  of  anything  unpleasant. 
No  printing  establishment  could  be  started  without  special 

■were  much  better  informed  by  private  letters  than  the  minister  by  his 
despatches.  "  Waar  zijn  waarachtige  berigten  omtrent  den  toestand  van 
Ned.  Ind.  te  zoeken  ?  "  TNI.,  1852,  14  : 1  :  140.  From  a  complaint  of  the 
Governor  General  in  1839  (S.  van  Deventer,  LS.,  3  :  75)  it  would  seem 
that  the  minister  often  treated  colonial  despatches  as  did  the  English 
ministers  in  Walpole's  time,  and  did  not  read  them  at  all.  A  Dutch  pro- 
vincial official  showed  that  his  superiors  had  utterly  erroneous  notions  in 
regard  to  conditions  in  Java  ;  Nota  of  Van  der  Poel,  1850,  S.  van  Deven- 
ter, LS.,  3  :  279. 

1  De  Stuers,  "  De  vestiging  en  uitbreiding  der  Nederlanders  ter  Westr 
kust  van  Sumatra,"  Amsterdam,  1850,  1  :  xxv,  c  ;  2  :  77-78. 


320  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

permission,  and  as  a  rule  nothing  could  be  printed  without 
being  submitted  to  a  censor  who  struck  out  everything  on 
which  a  criticism  of  the  government  could  possibly  be 
based.  The  "  Tijdschrift  voor  Nederlandsch  Indie  "  was 
sanctioned  in  1838  only  on  condition  that  it  refrained  from 
touching  on  political  questions,  and  the  reader  who  scans 
its  early  volumes  in  search  of  information  on  Java  will 
find  only  articles  on  such  subjects  as  primitive  Christianity 
and  polar  expeditions.  An  official  who  contributed  to  this 
journal  the  part  or  whole  of  any  official  document,  without 
express  permission,  was  threatened  with  the  penalties  for 
embezzlement  and  breach  of  confidence;  collaborators  of 
the  journal  who  had  been  sending  it  innocent  articles  on 
native  customs  were  afraid  thereafter  to  be  connected 
with  it.^ 

The  beginning  of  a  parliamentary  opposition  in  colonial 
affairs  appears  a  little  before  1840,  but  it  had  much  more 
to  do  with  Dutch  than  with  colonial  politics,  and  was  in  no 
sense  an  attack  upon  the  culture  system.  The  home  gov- 
ernment, in  financial  straits  because  of  the  recent  separa- 
tion of  Belgium,  proposed  to  raise  a  loan  on  the  strength 
of  the  colonial  revenues,  and  got  the  assent  of  the  Cham- 
bers in  1836  to  a  loan  of  140,000,000  florins,  secured  by 
the  transmarine  possessions.  The  amount  was  supposed 
to  represent  the  repayment  to  the  home  government  of  a 
part  of  its  colonial  expenditures  in  former  years.  Some 
curiosity  was  expressed  as  to  the  basis  of  the  government's 
claim  against  its  colonies,  and  figures  were  given  to  justify 
it ;  members  were  easily  satisfied,  and  in  some  cases  at 
least  actually  opposed   the    publication    of   facts  on  the 

1  Veth,  "De  openbaarheid  in  koloniale  aangelegenheden,"  De  Gids, 
1848,  2:86,  91,  95. 


IX  THE  CULTURE  SYSTEM:   REFORM  321 

colonies,  as  likely  to  lead  to  bad  results. ^  When  the  gov- 
ernment, however,  came  again  to  the  Chambers  in  1839 
for  a  loan  on  colonial  account,  it  did  not  find  them  so 
complaisant.  The  government  was  unpopular  because  of 
the  unsuccessful  issue  of  the  long  struggle  with  Belgium, 
and  the  finances  were  in  a  very  bad  condition.  Van  den 
Bosch,  then  minister  of  colonies,  tried  to  influence  legis- 
lators by  a  secret  and  confidential  letter  that  he  circulated, 
but  the  States  General  at  least  revolted  at  such  political 
methods,  and  the  second  Chamber  rejected  his  proposal 
by  a  vote  of  39  to  12.2 

The  growing  independence  of  the  legislature  was  recog- 
nized in  an  amendment  to  the  colonial  article  in  the 
constitution  granted  by  the  government  the  next  year. 
According  to  its  terms  the  States  General  was  to  receive 
regular  information  on  the  income  and  expenditures  of 
the  colonial  possessions,  and  was  to  determine  by  law  the 
disposal  of  surplus  revenue  coming  from  the  colonies.^ 
This  may  be  regarded  as  marking  some  progress  of  the 
States  General  in  its  fight  for  power,  but  it  had  practically 
no  effect  on  the  course  of  colonial  policy.  To  determine 
how  the  net  surplus  should  be  spent  in  the  Netherlands 
was  something  absolutely  distinct  from  determining  how 

1  See  the  report  of  the  fifth  section  of  the  Chamber,  1836,  De  Waal, 
2  :  144.  Original  text  of  the  law,  ib.,  2  :  101 ;  final  text,  2  :  159.  I  do  not  at- 
tempt to  give  all  the  fiscal  details.  The  government  did  not  actually  borrow 
the  capital  sum,  but  required  the  annual  interest  payments  from  the  Indies. 

2  De  Waal,  2  :  304.  Bosch  resigned,  was  made  a  Count  and  a  Minister 
of  State. 

3  De  Waal,  2  :  321,  362.  There  were  objections  even  to  this  amount  of 
parliamentary  power  over  the  colonies ;  it  was  said  that  parliamentary 
interference  had  cost  England  the  United  States,  and  France  San  Domingo. 
See  the  speeches  of  Beelaerts  van  Blokland,  De  Waal,  2  :  353  ;  of  Van 
Alphen,  ib.,  348. 


322  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

the  revenues  should  be  raised  in  India,  and  how  much  of 
them  should  be  spent  there.  No  better  proof  could  be 
given  of  the  backward  political  development  of  the  Neth- 
erlands, as  a  Dutch  author  has  pointed  out,  than  the  fact 
that  this  new  power  was  regarded  as  a  real  concession.^ 
It  was  still  impossible  for  members  of  the  Chamber  to 
obtain  any  full  and  accurate  information  from  the  govern- 
ment as  to  the  policy  pursued  and  the  results  in  India ; 
the  minister  of  the  colonies  deprecated  any  interference 
on  the  part  of  the  States  General,  and  refused  to  make  it 
a  party  to  his  deliberations. ^ 

It  is  natural,  therefore,  though  it  seems  astonishing  to 
one  who  knows  what  was  taking  place  at  the  time  in  Java, 
that  in  running  through  the  long  speeches  made  in  the 
States  General,  one  scarcely  ever  finds  an  intelligent 
reference  to  the  culture  system  or  criticism  of  its  work- 
ings. The  name  appears  in  the  debates,  coupled  some- 
times with  the  terms  "  forced  culture  "  and  "  monopoly  "  ; 
there  is  an  occasional  reference  to  complaints  of  European 
contractors  and  planters  in  Java  ;  but  practically  all  of 
the  discussions  referred  to  the  conduct  of  the  home  gov- 
ernment and  belonged  rather  to  Dutch  than  to  colonial 
politics.  It  was  generally  assumed  that  the  increased 
revenues  from  the  East  were  due  to  the  prosperity  of  the 
natives,  and  that  the  culture  system  was  conferring  on 
them  all  the  benefits  that  its  founder  had  promised. ^ 

The  one  great  fact  known  to  the  Dutch  people  and  to 
their  representatives  in  the  States  General  was  the  net 
surplus  that  was   turned  into   the  treasury  every  year. 

1  Buijs,  "Het  koloniaal  debat,"  Gids,  1870,  2  :347. 

2  Compare  the  speeches  by  Golstein  and  Baud,  1845,  De  Waal,  3  :  475, 
691.  8  cf.  De  Waal,  2  :  129,  176,  284. 


IX  THE   CULTURE   SYSTEM:    REFORM  823 

Arguments  against  the  system  would  have  needed  to  be 
strongly  urged  and  widely  spread  to  meet  this  argument 
for  it,  and  in  fact  there  was  practically  no  opposition  to 
the  culture  system  in  the  Netherlands  before  the  revision 
of  the  Dutch  constitution  in  1848.1  The  members  of  the 
liberal  party  did  not  before  that  time  oppose  the  govern- 
ment's colonial  policy  ;  they  opposed  the  political  system 
that  allowed  the  government  to  have  a  policy  of  any  kind 
free  from  their  knowledge  and  control.  It  was  not  until 
the  fundamental  question  of  government  by  the  king  or 
government  by  the  people  had  been  settled  that  the  de- 
tails of  government  could  form  the  subject  of  parliamen- 
tary discussion. 

The  colonial  question  was  of  minor  importance  in  the 
agitation  that  resulted  in  the  constitutional  changes  of 
1848,2  and  the  chief  results  of  the  new  constitution 
appeared  in  the  field  of  Dutch  politics.  The  Chambers 
of  the  States  General  were  given  more  of  a  popular  com- 
plexion, ministers  were  declared  responsible  to  them,  and 
the  Second  Chamber  in  especial  received  a  great  extension 
in  the  rights  of  initiative  and  amendment.  As  regards 
colonial  affairs  the  Chambers  were  not  united  in  their 
desires.  The  great  majority  of  the  members  desired  to 
limit  the  almost  absolute  power  that  the  king  had  had  in 
colonial  legislation,  but  many  feared  at  the  same  time  that 

1  Cf.  Money,  1  :  300.  "  Every  Dutchman  at  home  knows  that  the  sur- 
plus revenue  from  Java  saves  him  from  some  personal  contribution  to  the 
State,  and  the  prosperity  of  the  colony  is  thus  guarded  from  the  unsuit- 
able application  of  philanthropical  crotchets,  and  of  nineteenth  century 
ideas  .  .  ."  This  was  not  so  true  of  the  period  when  he  wrote  as  of  the 
earlier  period. 

2  1  have  seen  nothing  to  confirm  the  statement  of  Van  Soest  (KS., 
.3  :  108)  that  nothing  did  so  much  to  awaken  and  keep  alive  the  movement 
for  constitutional  revision  as  the  desire  for  an  honest  colonial  government. 


324  THE  DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

the  Chambers  might  be  tempted  to  undue  interference 
with  the  existing  arrangements  that  had  proved  so  profit- 
able. The  legislature  demanded  the  right  to  associate 
itself  with  the  king  in  colonial  government,  but  it  wanted 
little  more  than  this  formal  concession ;  it  had  but  the 
vaguest  idea  of  how  it  should  use  its  right,  and  in  all 
probability  the  conservative  element  would  have  rejected 
part  of  the  royal  concessions  if  it  could  have  foreseen  the 
use  that  was  to  be  made  of  them  in  the  coming  years.^ 

The  point  on  which  most  agreed  was  settled,  that  a 
colonial  constitution,  defining  the  objects  and  methods  of 
government,  should  be  established  "  by  law,"  that  is,  by 
the  concurrent  action  of  king  and  Chambers,  instead  of 
by  the  king  alone  as  previously.  Further  than  this,  the 
Chambers  were  given  specific  rights  of  legislation  over 
colonial  currency  and  finance,  and  a  vague  right  to  legis- 
late on  other  matters  "as  the  necessity  might  appear." 

It  is  apparent  that  the  important  constitutional  change 
of  1848  found  the  Dutch  altogether  unprepared  for  a 
reform  in  colonial  policy  and  administration.  The  de- 
bates of  the  time  showed  a  general  ignorance  of  the  most 
important  facts  concerning  the  condition  and  needs  of 
the  Eastern  dependencies.  Few  speakers  touched  on 
the  colonial  affairs,  these  only  in  a  desultory  way,  and 
with  a  vagueness  of  utterance  that  showed  them  to  be 
groping  in  the  dark.  It  was  characteristic  that  the  de- 
bate on  the  colonial  provisions  of  the  new  constitution 
centred  in  the  question  whether  the  Council  of  State 
should  be  continued  or  abolished, — a  matter  of  the  very 
slightest  importance  from  the  standpoint  of  the  following 

1  Buijs,  "  Kol.  debat,"  De  Gids,  1870,  2  :  348  ;  Waal,  NISG.,  3:2;  De 
Louter,  87  ff. 


IX  THE  CULTURE  SYSTEM:  REFORM         826 

period. 1  Though  the  new  constitution  provided  that  the 
king  should  make  annually  a  circumstantial  report  on 
colonial  affairs  to  the  States  General  the  reports  appeared 
long  after  the  events  to.  which  they  referred,  they  were 
ill  informed  and  dry. 2  Many  members  of  the  Second 
Chamber  still  nourished  the  fear  that  the  States  General 
would  busy  itself  too  much  with  colonial  affairs,  and  were 
grateful  to  a  government  that  would  pay  money  into  the 
treasury  and  not  tell  hoAV  it  got  it.^  A  liberal  ministry 
came  into  power  after  the  constitutional  revision  of  1848, 
but  it  found  enough  at  home  to  occupy  all  its  energies,  in 
the  reform  of  electoral  laws,  of  provincial  and  communal 
organization,  of  poor  relief  and  taxation.  The  colonial 
question  remained  in  the  background,  and  no  one  thought 
whether  the  colonial  minister  and  his  associates  repre- 
sented the  colonial  ideals  of  the  liberal  party.  The 
liberal  party  really  as  yet  had  no  colonial  policy.  If  any 
one  spoke  of  liberal  colonial  policy,  as  rarely  happened, 
he  had  in  mind  some  specific  question,  like  the  abolition 
of  slavery,  or  had  a  vague  idea  of  some  sort  of  enlightened 
despotism.  There  was  an  indistinct  feeling,  perhaps,  that 
something  should  be  done  for  the  colonies,  but  there  were 
no  clear  plans  as  yet.  The  reform  of  the  colonial  system 
did  not  follow  1848  as  a  -direct  and  immediate  result  of 


1  Buijs,  "  Kol.  debat,"  Gids,  1870,  2  :  349.  He  says  that  only  one  man 
among  all  (Sloet  tot  Oldhuis)  sketched  the  real  lines  of  the  great  colonial 
question.     Veth,  Openbaarheid,  Gids,  1848,  2  :  80. 

2  "  Waar  zijn  waarachtige  berigten  omtrent  den  toestand  van  Ned.  Ind. 
te  zoeken  ?  "  TNI.,  1852,  14  :  1  :  129.  The  report  on  the  year  1849  was 
sent  in  toward  the  end  of  1851. 

3  Thorbecke,  in  his  speech  of  December,  1852,  said  that  most  members 
of  the  Second  Chamber  still  had  this  fear.  Goltstein,  "  Koloniale  politiek," 
Gids,  1879,  2  :  251. 


326  THE   DUTCH   IN  JAVA  chap. 

the    constitutional    revision  ;    the    difference    from    the 
former  period  was  at  first  scarcely  perceptible. ^ 

The  year  1848  forms,  nevertheless,  a  turning-point  ;  it 
marked  at  least  the  beginning  of  opportunity  to  reform 
the  colonial  policy  through  parliamentary  channels  if  not 
the  beginning  of  actual  reform.  A  ugav  class  of  men 
entered  the  Second  Chamber,  liberals  schooled  in  the  doc- 
trines of  the  classical  political  economy  and  opposed  to 
monopoly  and  compulsion,  in  closer  touch  with  the  people 
and  with  broader  sympathies  than  had  been  the  case  be- 
fore. They  could  make  their  influence  felt  through  the 
powers  that  the  publicity  of  debates  and  the  rights  of 
initiative  and  amendment  conferred  upon  them.  Early 
in  1848,  uninfluenced  by  the  revolutionary  movement  in 
Europe,  the  Governor  General  granted  the  "  Tijdschrift 
voor  Nederlandsch  Indie  "  more  freedom  in  the  publication 
of  official  documents,  and  that  journal  gave  the  public  more 
information  about  the  Eastern  dependencies  in  the  four 
years  following  this  date  than  it  had  been  able  to  give  in 
all  the  decade  preceding. ^  The  editor  of  the  "  Tijdschrift," 
who  had  spent  the  past  ten  years  as  a  preacher  at  Batavia, 
was  involved  in  a  political  demonstration  there  and  found 
it  advisable  to  return  to  the  Netherlands.  He  was  elected 
to  the  Second  Chamber,  and  disclosed  to  his  fellow-mem- 
bers a  state  of  affairs  in  Java  of  which  they  had  not 
dreamed  before.     AVhile  he  was  not  at  this  time,  as  he  be- 

1  Buijs,  "Kol.  debat,"  Gids,  1870,  2:349ff. ;  Beaufort,  "  Dertig  jaren 
nit  onze  gescliiedenis,"  Gids,  1895,  3  :  510.  Convenient  summaries  of  the 
parliamentary  history  of  the  period  are  to  be  found  in  "  Histoire  G^n^- 
rale  "  of  Lavisse  and  Rambaud,  11  :  Chap.  11,  by  aKtin  ;  in  Ritter,  "  Eene 
Halve  Eeuw,"  1  :  Chap.  Ill,  by  Geertsema. 

2Veth,  Openbaarheid,  Gids,  1848,  2:105,  111;  TNL,  1852,  14: 
2  :  438. 


IX  THE   CULTURE   SYSTEM:    REFORM  327 

came  later,  an  opponent  of  the  culture  system  through  and 
through,  he  was  well  informed  on  the  evils  of  its  opera- 
tion. His  knowledge,  boldness,  and  eloquence  secured 
him  a  hearing  if  they  did  not  secure  him  votes  ;  he  per- 
formed, as  no  other  man  could  have  done,  the  work  of  pre- 
paring the  Chambers  for  a  reform,  though  his  standpoint 
was  too  advanced  for  great  influence  in  practical  politics. ^ 
Another  influence  that  led  to  a  crystallization  of  opinion 
on  the  colonial  policy  was  the  framing  of  the  Regeerings 
Reglement  in  1854,  according  to  the  constitution  of  1848. 
The  liberal  tendencies  in  the  Netherlands  were  strong 
enough  to  assure  for  themselves  a  decided  influence  in 
constructing  the  principles  on  which  the  colonial  govern- 
ment was  to  be  carried  on.  The  Regeerings  Reglement 
established,  among  other  objects  of  Dutch  rule,  greater 
freedom  of  the  press,  the  abolition  of  slavery,  the  further- 
ing of  the  education  of  the  natives,  the  lease  of  waste 
lands  to  European  planters,  and  a  proper  regulation  of  the 
native  services  and  land-tax. ^  As  regards  the  culture 
system,  the  colonial  constitution  gave  a  true  expression  of 
the  state  of  feeling  at  the  time,  a  mixture  of  ideas  in 
which  the  desire  to  further  the  fiscal  interests  of  the  home 
government  struggled  with  the  desire  to  extend  the 
chances  of  European  planters  in  Java  and  to  protect  the 
natives  against  oppression. ^ 

1  See  the  obituary  of  Van  Hoe  veil  in  De  Econ.,  1879,  1  :  275  ff.  ;  Buijs, 
"Kol.  debat,"  De  Gids,  1870,  2  :  350  ff. ;  Goltstein,  KP.,  Gids,  1879, 
2  :  258. 

2 1  quote  the  most  important  provisions  from  the  summary  in  Veth, 
Java,  2  :  425  ff.  The  colonial  constitution  is  a  document  covering  twenty- 
five  octavo  pages  as  printed  in  the  "  Regeeriugsalmanak." 

3  Buijs,  Gids,  1870,  2  :  .352,  calls  it  a  fitting  expression  of  the  half- 
liberalism,  "  faithful  as  far  as  the  purse  "  (getrouw  tot  aan  de  heurs),  that 
inspired  legislators  at  the  time. 


328  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

The  importance  of  the  paragraph  on  the  culture  system 
in  the  colonial  constitution,  as  forming  the  basis  for  all  later 
reforms,  and  its  value  in  indicating  abuses  that  had  to  be 
done  away,  justify  a  verbal  translation  of  it  in  this  place. ^ 

"  The  Governor  General  keeps  so  far  as  practicable  in 
operation  cultures  introduced  by  the  government,  and  in 
agreement  with  the  royal  commands  takes  care  :  — 

1.  "that  the  cultures  do  not  interfere  with  the  produc- 
tion of  sufficient  means  of  subsistence  ; 

2.  "that  so  far  as  the  cultures  occupy  land  cleared  by 
the  native  population  for  its  own  use,  this  land  be  disposed 
of  with  justice  and  with  respect  for  existing  rights  and 
customs  ; 

3.  "  that  in  the  assignment  of  labor  the  same  rules  be 
observed  ; 

4.  "that  the  pay  of  the  natives  concerned,  avoiding  in- 
jurious enhancement,  be  such  that  the  government  cul- 
tures return  them  with  the  same  labor  at  least  the  same 
advantages  as  free  cultivation  ; 

5.  "that  so  far  as  practicable  the  oppressions  which, 
after  a  careful  investigation,  may  be  found  to  exist  in  re- 
gard to  the  cultures,  be  removed  ;  and 

6.  "that  then  a  regulation  be  prepared,  based  on  vol- 
untary agreements  with  the  communities  and  individuals 
concerned,  as  a  transition  to  a  condition  in  which  it  will 
be  possible  to  dispense  with  the  intervention  of  the 
government." 

While  this  article  of  the  colonial  constitution  recognized 
in  the  culture  system  something  not  immutable  and  eter- 

1  Keg.  Reg.,  Art.  56  ;  "  Regeeringsalmanak  voor  Ned.  Ind.,"  1899,  1 :  15*. 

[*  There  are  two  sets  of  pages  In  this  book,  and  one  is  marked  by  the  addition  of  an 
asterisk.] 


IX  THE   CULTURE   SYSTEM:   REFORM  329 

nal,  as  the  strict  conservatives  would  have  desired,  it  de- 
ferred to  a  distant  future  any  change  in  the  principle  of 
forced  labor.  It  might  seem  to  have  established  the  sys- 
tem more  firmly  in  enjoining  that  it  should  be  maintained 
for  the  time,  and  in  basing  it  upon  common  principles 
of  justice  and  policy.  In  fact,  however,  the  recognition 
of  these  principles  led  fatally  to  the  abolition  of  tlie  sys- 
tem. They  were  really  nothing  but  a  restatement  of  the 
promises  that  Bosch  had  made,  and  that  the  government 
had  continued  to  assert,  but  they  were  irreconcilable  with 
the  workings  of  the  system.  It  was  a  pleasant  ideal,  that 
of  getting  great  revenue  and  of  conferring  at  the  same 
time  great  benefit  on  the  people  who  paid  the  revenue, 
but  it  was  visionary.  The  Dutch  must  choose  between 
making  money  by  the  sacrifice  of  the  natives,  and  protect- 
ing natives  at  the  sacrifice  of  fiscal  interests.  The  colonial 
constitution  could  not  be  applied  without  leading  to  one 
or  the  other  of  these  alternatives.  Little  by  little  Dutch 
legislators  perceived  this,  and  began  to  range  themselves 
in  parties  sharply  defined  on  the  question  of  the  main- 
tenance or  abolition  of  the  culture  system. 

Before  the  issue  was  joined,  some  of  the  worst  features 
in  the  application  of  the  culture  system  had  been  reformed. 
The  feeling  in  the  Netherlands  was  changing,  the  condi- 
tion of  the  Dutch  finances  was  improving,  and  the  rise  in 
the  selling  price  of  coffee  enabled  the  government  to  relax 
its  demands  without  a  loss  in  revenue.  Beginning  with 
the  rule  of  Rochussen,  who  was  Governor  General  from 
1845  to  1851,  the  more  flagrant  abuses  were  corrected ; 
the  minor  cultures,  unprofitable  and  oppressive,  were 
restricted,  and  the  government  returned  to  the  principle 
of  limiting  its  crops  to  one-fifth  of  the  natives'  land.     A 


330  THE   DUTCH   IN  JAVA  chap. 

change  in  the  spirit  of  the  government  was  shown  by  the 
partial  reform  in  1852  of  the  pasar  tax,  which  had  been 
farmed  out  to  the  Chinese,  and  had  been  a  fruitful  source 
of  oppression.  The  introduction  of  the  colonial  constitu- 
tion of  1854  set  a  new  standard  for  the  government  in 
India,  and  forced  a  more  liberal  policy  there,  though 
its  practical  results  fell  below  the  anticipations  of  the 
reformers.^ 

The  credit  for  bringing  home  to  the  mass  of  the  people 
the  need  of  a  reform,  and  of  making  it,  as  it  was,  the  polit- 
ical question  of  prime  importance  during  a  great  part  of  tlie 
sixties,  belongs  in  considerable  measure  to  an  interesting 
figure  in  the  history  of  Dutch  literature,  Edouard  Douwes 
Dekker.  His  book,  "  Max  Havelaar,  or  The  Coffee  Auc- 
tions of  the  Dutch  Trading  Company," ^  published  under 
the  pseudonym  of  Multatuli,  has  often  been  compared  to 
"Uncle  Tom's  Cabin"  in  the  influence  that  it  exercised. 
Dekker  had  served  the  government  in  the  East  Indies  for 
a  number  of  years  in  various  capacities  ;  in  1856  he  was 
made  assistant  resident  of  Lebak  in  Java.  He  found  that 
native  officials  oppressed  the  people,  practically  with  the 
connivance  of  their  Dutch  superiors,  and  his  complaints 
and  demands  for  justice  were  met  with  an  apathy  that 
caused  him  to  revolt.  He  had  the  temper  of  a  man  of  let- 
ters rather  than  of  a  politician ;  in  a  few  weeks  he  had  made 
his  official  position  untenable,  and  returned  to  the  Nether- 

1  The  regulations  for  the  lease  of  waste  land  to  Europeans,  1856  ff., 
were  so  hedged  with  restrictions  that  they  had  little  practical  importance. 

2  The  original  was  published  in  Amsterdam  in  1860  under  the  title, 
"  Max  Havelaar,  of  de  Koffijveilingen  der  Xederlandsche  Handel  maat- 
schappij,  door  Multatuli."  An  English  translation  by  Baron  Alphonse 
Nahuijs  was  published  at  Edinburgh  in  1868,  and  characteristic  selections 
are  printed  in  Warner's  Librarj',  8  :  4513-4520. 


IX  THE   CULTURE   SYSTEM:   REFORM  331 

lands  to  appeal  to  the  people  against  the  government.  In 
the  form  of  a  story  of  which  Max  Havelaar,  an  official  in 
Java,  is  the  hero,  he  described  his  own  experiences,  ex- 
posing the  faults  of  the  colonial  policy  and  the  vices  of 
the  administration.  The  book  is  not  free  from  errors  of 
fact,  for  Dekker  idealized  the  Javanese  and  condemned 
the  Dutch  without  discrimination ;  it  is  fantastic  in  its 
composition  and  style,  and  partly  merits  Wallace's  descrip- 
tion, "a  tedious  and  long-winded  story."  It  certainly 
lacks  the  directness  and  force  of  "  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin."  ^ 
The  author  himself  was  not  impeccable.  When  he  had 
completed  arrangements  for  the  publication  of  the  book, 
he  considered  negotiations  with  the  government  for  its 
suppression  ;  the  terms  that  he  proposed  were  that  he 
should  be  given  the  office  of  resident  in  Java  to  get  money 
to  pay  his  debts,  that  a  handsome  advance  should  be  made 
to  him,  that  the  years  lost  from  service  should  be  counted 
for  his  pension,  and  that  he  should  be  decorated  with  the 
order  of  the  Dutch  Lion  !  ^  Spite  of  all  faults  of  style 
and  author,  however,  there  were  a  force  and  earnestness 
in  the  book  that  commanded  attention  and  justified  the 

1 1  quote  a  criticism  of  the  book  from  a  literary  standpoint  by  Keymeu- 
len,  "Un  6crivain  hollaudais,"  Rev.  des  deux  Mondes,  1892,  110  :  802.  "Si 
nous  avioiis  k  juger  Max  Havelaar  comme  un  roman  ordinaire,  nous  en 
parlerions  avec  s6v^rit6  et  peut-etre  n'en  parlerions  nous  pas  du  tout. 
L'action  presque  nuUe,  mal  conduite  et  m^diocrenaent  int^ressant,  se 
traiue  de  chapitre  en  cliapitre  entre  des  conversations  sans  vivacity  et  des 
descriptions  en  style  d'ing^nieur."  .  .  .  The  praise  of  the  editor  of  a  later 
edition  of  Max  Havelaar,  Vosmaer,  is  certainly  extravagant.  Not  every 
one,  however,  vi'ill  agree  with  Keymeulen,  and  no  one  who  reads  the  book 
will  deny  that  the  author  had  very  rare  ability  in  some  lines. 

2  Keymeulen,  p.  790.  I  have  verified  this  very  strange  transaction  from 
Dekker's  letters,  though  it  does  not  appear  from  them  that  he  actually 
attempted  to  carry  it  into  effect.  See  Mevr.  Douwes  Dekker,  "  Brieven 
van  Multatuli,"  Amsterdam,  1890  ;  letters  for  1859,  pp.  126,  146, 


332  THE  DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

author's  introductory  statement,  "  I  shall  be  read."  From 
digressions  and  extravagances  of  which  the  writer  was 
himself  conscious,  he  returned  always  to  the  main  point. 
"  The  book  is  motley  —  there  is  no  regularity  in  it  — 
straining  after  effect  —  the  style  is  bad  —  the  author  is 
inexperienced  —  no  talent  —  no  method  —  Good,  good, 
all  good  !     But  —  the  Javanese  is  maltreated !  "  ^ 

It  may  be  an  exaggeration  to  call  Multatuli  the  Indian 
Luther,  posting  his  theses,  and  to  say  of  his  book  that 
it  struck  the  whole  country  with  horror,  tiiat  it  was  like 
a  thunder  clap  in  a  clear  sky.^  It  was  only  one  among  a 
number  of  factors  tending  to  strengthen  the  demand  for 
colonial  reform  at  home.  It  came  in  a  critical  moment, 
however,  and  intensified  forces  that  might  have  worked 
surely  but  would  have  worked  more  slowly  without  it.  A 
Dutch  reviewer  deprecated  the  tone  and  manner  of  the  book 
while  recognizing  its  claim  to  attention.^  He  thought  that 
the  romantic  color  of  the  story  would  hurt  its  influence  with 
the  serious-minded  ;  instead  of  proving  anything  it  would 
only  raise  questions,  and  people  would  not  believe  that  the 
state  of  affairs  could  be  so  bad  as  pictured.  The  very  merit 
of  the  book  was  that  it  did  raise  questions ;  it  interested 
people,  however  ill  it  informed  them,  and  it  forced  the 
colonial  question  before  the  Chambers.  It  brought  a  new 
note,  too,  into  the  colonial  strife ;  it  disregarded  abstract 
questions  of  policy  and  based  itself  on  broad  grounds  of 

1  Max  Havelaar,  p.  255.     The  broken  sentences  are  in  the  original. 

2  Keymeulen,  805  ;  Max  Havelaar,  Dutch  ed.,  p.  6  (Vosmaer);  English 
ed.,  p.  vii  (Nahuys,  quoting  a  member  of  the  Dutch  Chamber).  In  the 
TNI,  1887,  16:  1  :  197-200,  tliere  is  a  review  of  Dekker's  life  from  the 
"  Nieuwe  Rotterdamsche  Courant,"  with  a  criticism  aimed  to  show  that 
his  influence  has  been  exaggerated. 

8  De  Economist,  1860,  Bijblad,  234  ff. 


IX  THE   CULTURE   SYSTEM:   REFORM  333 

humanity.  Dekker  took  sides  neither  with  the  conserva- 
tives for  forced  labor,  nor  with  the  liberals  for  free  labor  ; 
he  had  but  one  refrain  —  the  Javanese  is  given  over  to 
the  oppression  of  his  chiefs  and  they  abuse  him  in  the 
name  of  the  king.^ 

The  colonial  question  came  to  the  front  in  the  Dutch 
Chambers  about  1860,  and  held  a  leading  place  in  their 
deliberations  during  the  decade.  It  gave  rise  to  bitter 
personal  and  party  feeling,  caused  a  number  of  ministerial 
crises,  and  occasioned  the  settlement  of  some  important 
principles  in  Dutch  constitutional  practice.  It  was  the 
misfortune,  indeed,  of  the  Dutch  dependencies  at  this 
period  that  the  questions  of  the  greatest  practical  impor- 
tance to  them  were  judged  at  home  largely  by  their  bear- 
ings on  party  and  constitutional  politics. ^  By  1870  the 
liberals  had  won  the  victory,  and  the  culture  system  had 
been  condemned  to  make  a  place  for  the  modern  system 
of  free  labor.  The  narrative  of  the  steps  by  which  this 
result  was  accomplished  is  in  brief  as  follows  :  ^  — 

The  decade  opened  with  a  ministry  in  power  representing 
the  moderate  conservatives  and  upholding  the  principles 
of   the  culture  system.     The  budget  of  the  minister  of 

iPierson,  KP.,  332. 

2  The  United  States  consul  at  Batavia  ascribed  the  lack  of  confidence 
and  stagnation  of  trade  in  1868  to  "the  lengthy  discussions  in  the  Dutch 
Parliament  by  members  who  know  nothing  of  India,  and  by  others  who 
.  .  .  still  consider  their  Indian  possessions  a  sort  of  mining  speculation, 
etc.  ;  the  nearly  equal  division  of  political  parties  in  Holland  on  colonial 
affairs  ;  the  frequent  changes  of  cabinet  and  consequent  vacillating  policy 
as  regards  Netherlands  India."     U.  S.  Commercial  Relations,  1868,  p.  425. 

8  This  sketch  of  the  parliamentary  history  of  the  period  is  based  mainly 
on  the  following  authorities  :  Geertsema,  in  Ritter,  "Eene  Halve  Eeuw," 
1,  Chap.  Ill ;  Beaufort,  "  Dertig  jaren  uit  onze  geschiedenis,"  De  Gids, 
1895,  3  :  504  ff. ;  [Brouwer]  "  Koloniale  kamerkout,"  ib.,  1863,  1  :  249  ff.  ; 
Buijs,  "  Het  koloniaal  debat,"  ib.,  1870,  2  :  338  ff. 


334  THE   DUTCH   IN  JAVA  chap. 

the  colonies  was  rejected  by  the  Second  Chamber,  but 
without  decisive  indication  that  a  break  in  the  former 
policy  was  demanded  ;  and  the  ministry  as  it  was  reor- 
ganized soon  afterward  took  for  its  watchword  "  liberal 
in  Netherland,  conservative  in  India."  The  fall  of  this 
ministry  led  to  the  recall  to  power  of  Thorbecke,  who  had 
been  the  soul  of  the  liberal  opposition.  That  this  marked 
a  victory  of  liberal  principles  in  colonial  as  well  as  domes- 
tic affairs  was  clearly  shown  by  the  rejection  of  Thor- 
becke's  first  nominee  to  the  portfolio  of  the  colonies,  and 
the  substitution  for  him  of  Van  der  Putte,  who  had  been 
picked  out  by  public  opinion  as  the  man  to  carry  through 
the  colonial  reforms,  and  who  kept  his  place  even  when 
such  difference  of  opinion  arose  between  him  and  Thor- 
becke as  forced  the  latter  to  resign.  For  three  years  Van 
der  Putte  maintained  his  power  in  the  face  of  an  opposi- 
tion that  was  united  only  in  its  resistance  to  change  ;  it 
included  all  cautious  spirits  who  prized  the  millions 
coming  to  the  Dutch  treasury  from  Java  and  feared  that 
any  interference  with  the  culture  system  would  imperil 
the  surplus.  The  conservatives  had  no  measures  of  their 
own  to  propose  in  place  of  the  reforms  that  Van  der  Putte 
urged  ;  when  they  defeated  a  law  of  his  for  the  opening 
of  Java  to  the  enterprise  of  individual  Europeans  and 
forced  him  to  retire,  they  kept  the  power  for  themselves 
only  by  refraining  from  a  positive  policy  of  any  kind.  In 
some  features  the  government  of  the  conservatives  was 
marked  by  reactionary  measures  in  India  ;  in  general  it 
was  a  period  of  stagnation.  All  the  influence  of  the  king 
was  thrown  in  favor  of  this  ministry,  and  it  endeavored 
to  maintain  itself,  in  spite  of  some  tactical  mistakes,  by 
appealing  to  the  dynastic  feeling  in  the  country.     With 


IX  THE   CULTURE   SYSTEM  :   REFORM  335 

the  campaign  cry  of,  "  No  faction,  hurrah  for  Orange  !  " 
it  won  a  slight  majority  in  an  appeal  to  the  people.  The 
conservative  majority  was,  however,  not  harmonious  and 
disappeared  in  1868  ;  the  return  of  the  liberals  to  power 
in  that  year  settled  finally  not  only  the  great  constitu- 
tional question  whether  ministers  were  to  be  royal  or  par- 
liamentary,— it  settled  also  the  question  of  colonial  policy. 
The  so-called  agrarian  law,  passed  in  1870,  may  be  taken 
as  the  end  of  the  struggle.  In  contrast  with  the  spirit  of 
previous  legislation  this  law  had  for  its  direct  aims  the 
safeguarding  of  native  rights  and  the  encouragement  of 
the  enterprise  of  individual  Europeans  ;  government  cul- 
tures might  still  exist,  but  in  the  face  of  this  practical 
application  of  the  principles  enunciated  in  1854  their 
position  was  henceforth  exceptional  and  insecure.  It  is 
significant  that  in  the  long  debate  over  this  law  no  one 
among  the  conservatives  dared  meet  the  question  of  prin- 
ciple squarely,  and  oppose  the  law  solely  on  the  old 
ground  that  it  was  a  departure  from  the  culture  system. 
The  culture  system  lasted  long  after  this  time,  some  rem- 
nants of  it  indeed  are  in  existence  yet,  but  from  this  date 
it  was  doomed  to  extinction. 

The  growth  and  final  victory  of  the  movement  in  the 
Netherlands  for  a  reform  of  the  colonial  system  was  re- 
flected in  Java  in  a  series  of  measures  that  did  away 
with  a  number  of  abuses  handed  down  from  the  preceding 
period.  The  less  important  government  cultures,  those  of 
tea,  tobacco,  indigo,  pepper,  and  cinnamon,  were  given  up 
between  1860  and  1865.  Some  of  these  had  been  the 
source  of  actual  loss  to  the  government,  none  had  been 
the  source  of  any  considerable  profit,  and  even  the  con- 
servatives were  ready  to  agree  that  these  cultures  were  not 


336  THE   DUTCH   IN  JAVA  chap. 

worth  the  keeping.  As  coffee  was  grown  on  waste  land,  the 
sugar  culture  was  henceforth  the  only  one  occupying  arable 
land  of  the  natives.  The  natives  were  to  some  extent  pre- 
pared for  a  system  of  free  labor  contracts  by  the  abolition 
of  the  vexatious  passport  regulations  restricting  the  free 
movement  of  laborers,  and  by  a  serious  attempt  to  protect 
them  against  excessive  demands  on  their  services  by  the 
government  or  by  native  officials.  The  right  of  contract 
for  labor  with  a  whole  village  was  taken  away.  The  pre- 
miums or  percentages  on  government  cultures,  formerly 
paid  to  officials,  were  abolished,  the  payment  of  native 
officials  in  land  was  restricted,  and  the  village  heads  were 
freed  from  the  fear  of  degrading  punishments.  As  abuses 
disappeared,  the  necessity  for  concealing  them  vanished 
also,  and  the  important  facts  concerning  conditions  in 
Java  were  no  longer  jealously  guarded  as  official  secrets.^ 

Lat-er  chapters  will  showthat  much  remained  in  Java  to  be 
reformed  in  the  generation  following  the  fall  of  the  culture 
system.  Before  treating  this  recent  period  it  will  be  well  to 
return  again  to  the  culture  system,  to  notice  any  other  sys- 
tem like  that  applied  by  the  Dutch,  and  to  review  briefly  the 
general  faults  that  are  inherent  in  every  system  of  the  kind. 

The  closest  parallel  to  the  culture  system  known  to  the 
writer  is  the  system  of  forced  cultures  established  by  the 

1  Van  der  Putte  opened  the  colonial  archives  in  1866  ;  one  reason  that 
Thurlow  gave  for  making  his  report  in  1868  was  the  opportunity  that  he 
first  had  then  of  securing  accurate  information.  Eeport,  p.  338.  S.  van 
Deventer's  Bijdragen,  the  most  important  source  of  information  about 
Java  during  the  period  of  the  culture  system,  was  made  by  command  of 
Van  der  Putte,  and  was  compiled  very  hurriedly  through  fear  that  a  con- 
servative ministry  might  get  power  and  forbid  its  publication.  Gids,  1868, 
4:  417.  I  have  summarized  the  reforms  in  Java,  1860-1870,  from  the  list 
in  Regeeringsalmanak,  Kroniek,  p.  598  *  ff.,  and  from  the  article  by  "  Een 
Oud-Resident,"  TNI.,  1879,  8  : 2  :  420  ff, 


IX  THE   CULTURE   SYSTEM:    REFORM  337 

Spanish  government  in  the  Philippines  in  1780.  It  was 
applied  at  first  to  the  production  of  tobacco,  indigo,  and 
silk,  but  was  later  restricted  to  tobacco  alone.  On  land  fit 
for  the  cultivation  of  tobacco  the  natives  were  forced,  on 
penalty  of  severe  corporal  punishment,  to  grow  that  crop 
and  to  deliver  the  product  to  the  government  at  an  arbi- 
trary and  nominal  price.  The  government  sold  the 
product  in  Europe,  and  got  from  this  source  a  consider- 
able part  of  its  revenue  —  fiscal  reasons  determined  the 
introduction  and  maintenance  of  the  system  in  the  Philip- 
pines as  in  Java.  The  system  resulted  in  the  abuse  of 
the  natives,  corruption  of  the  officials,  the  discourage- 
ment of  private  enterprise,  and  such  a  deterioration  in 
the  quality  of  the  product  that  much  of  it  was  unsal- 
able at  any  price.  A  report  to  the  home  government  in 
1871  from  the  director  of  the  culture  showed  that  the  net 
gain  from  it  was  much  less  than  had  been  supposed 
($1,360,000),  and  would  vanish  entirely  if  the  government 
made  the  necessary  expenditures  on  machinery,  factories, 
and  warehouses,  paid  the  arrears  due  to  native  cultivators 
($1,600,000  for  the  crops  of  1869  and  1870),  and  paid  cash 
in  the  future.  It  showed  that  the  people  of  the  richest 
districts  of  the  islands  had  been  reduced  to  utter  misery 
by  the  culture  ;  they  were  worse  off  than  the  slaves  in 
Cuba,  for  these  were  fed  by  their  masters,  while  the  govern- 
ment would  not  allow  the  natives  in  the  Philippines  the 
time  necessary  to  gain  their  food  supply.  The  forced 
culture  was  finally  abolished  in  1882.^ 

The  Dutch  have  sometimes  claimed  that  they  were  no 
worse  than  their  English  neighbors,  and  that  only  "  British 

1  Jagor,   "Reisen  in  den  Philippinem,"    Berlin,    1873,   pp.  257-270. 
Foreman,  "The  Philippine  Islands,"  London,  1892,  p.  349. 


838  THE  DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

cant "  could  deny  the  existence  of  forced  cultures  in 
British  India.  The  claim  is  justified  by  the  facts  to  a 
certain  extent.  In  the  indigo  and  opium  cultures  in  India 
there  have  been  cases  of  compulsion  of  the  natives  by  the 
planters  attended  with  as  grave  abuses  as  any  that  marked 
the  application  of  the  culture  system  in  Java.^  There  is 
this  essential  difference,  however,  that  the  British  govern- 
ment has  never  made  itself  responsible  for  the  evils  by 
encouraging  the  system  that  gave  rise  to  them,  and  if  it 
sinned  it  was  by  omission.  Dilke  drew  the  proper  contrast 
between  the  policies  of  the  two  governments  when  he  said, 
"With  our  system  there  is  some  chance  of  right  being 
done,  so  small  is  our  self-interest  in  the  wrong."  The 
British  government  faced  the  right  way,  whatever  were  its 
weaknesses  ;  the  Dutch  government  was  in  itself  a  wrong. 
The  author  of  a  recently  published  article  on  the  policy 
of  the    Dutch  in  Java^  expresses  a  doubt  whether  the 

1  See  Money,  Java,  1 :  143  ;  the  review  of  Wiselius,  by  Van  der  Lith, 
Gids,  1888,  4:  164,  and  Stobie,  "An  Incident  of  Real  Life  in  Bengal," 
Fortnightly  Review,  1887,  48:  329-341  —  an  astonishing  story  of  what  can 
happen  even  in  modern  India.  Boys,  p.  66,  says  that  the  government  of 
India  "is  not  inexperienced  in  the  culture  system,"  but  admits  the  "all- 
important  point,"  the  difference  between  competition  and  compulsion. 
The  [English]  Economist,  in  a  review  of  Money's  book,  Oct.  12,  1861, 
p.  1127,  suggested  that  the  government  might  apply  the  culture  system  to 
the  cultivation  of  cotton  in  India  so  far  as  to  advance  capital  to  contractors, 
and  allow  the  civil  servants  to  help  them  in  making  arrangements  with 
the  natives  for  labor ;  it  rejected  the  idea  that  the  government  would 
compel  the  natives  to  grow  cotton.  Dilke,  "Greater  Britain,"  Phila., 
1869,  2 :  156,  opposed  the  scheme  of  government  advances  to  the  coffee 
planters  of  Ceylon,  through  fear  of  jobbery  and  fear  that  the  government 
would  connive  at  the  oppression  of  native  laborers.  I  suspect  that  in- 
stances of  methods  very  much  like  those  of  the  culture  system  could  be 
proved  in  British  India,  but  I  am  not  aware  that  a  government  system  of 
the  kind  ever  existed  under  British  rule. 

2  G.  K.  Anton,  "  Neuere  Agrarpolitik  der  Hollander  auf  Java,"  Schmol- 
ler's  Jahrbuch  fur  Gesetzgebung,  1899,  23  :  1337-1361. 


IX  THE  CULTURE  SYSTEM:    REFORM  339 

oppression  of  the  native  population  was  a  necessary  result 
of  the  system,  and  is  not  rather  to  be  ascribed  to  abuses 
in  the  application  of  a  principle  than  to  the  principle  itself. 
To  his  mind  all  depends  on  the  character  of  the  State  that 
assumes  the  office  of  planter.  Under  the  present  Dutch 
government,  of  which  he  holds  a  high  opinion,  he  believes 
that  the  native  population  would  fare  better  under  "  the 
paternal  despotism  of  a  culture  system  freed  of  its  abuses," 
than  under  the  exploitation  of  capitalists.  How  far  can 
a  system  of  this  kind  be  freed  from  evil  characteristics  ? 
The  present  writer  believes  that  the  abuses  followed  in  the 
main  as  a  result  of  the  principles  of  the  system,  the  prin- 
ciples of  forced  labor  under  government  management  for 
government  profit.  Not  that  the  examples  cited  to  illus- 
trate the  faults  of  the  system  would  occur  again  in  just 
the  same  form,  for  many  of  them  are  extreme.  They  were 
not  things  that  happened  every  day  in  every  part  of  the 
island.  But  things  of  the  same  kind  would  happen 
again,  wherever  the  system  was  tried,  and  whatever  state 
administered  it.  They  would  happen  because  they  result 
not  from  vices  peculiar  to  a  race  of  men  or  a  period  of 
time,  or  even  to  a  particular  organization  of  society,  but 
from  the  universal  failings  of  human  nature  and  human 
organization.  Neither  mankind  nor  government  has  be- 
come so  much  better  in  the  last  fifty  years  that  it  can 
trust  itself  to  undertake  problems  that  have  hitherto 
always  proved  insoluble.  If  the  Dutch  government  de- 
serves so  much  confidence  to-day,  it  is  because  it  has 
given  up  the  kind  of  functions  that  the  culture  system 
thrust  upon  it,  and  has  confined  itself  to  what  a  govern- 
ment can  properly  do.  It  might  reintroduce  the  old 
system,  and  administer  it  for  a  time  with  some  success, 


340  THE  DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

certainly  with  less  abuse  than  was  characteristic  of  the 
former  administration,  but  in  the  end  the  world  would 
lose  a  good  government  and  get  only  a  poor  planter  by 
the  change.  It  is  impossible  to  draw  the  line  between 
evils  inherent  in  the  system  itself  and  abuses  in  its 
administration,  because  the  two  are  vitally  connected. 
This  criticism  does  not  apply  to  a  system  introduced 
and  maintained  with  really  benevolent  motives.  I  am 
perfectly  ready  to  admit  that  the  culture  system  could 
have  been  carried  out  according  to  the  original  plans 
of  Van  den  Bosch  so  as  to  be  a  blessing  and  not  a  curse 
to  the  people  subject  to  it.  There  were  flaws  in  the  eco- 
nomic theory  of  the  system,  but  flaws  that  need  have  led 
to  no  evils  if  the  system  had  been  applied  in  a  spirit  of 
humanity  according  with  the  high  professions  of  its 
founder.  The  sufferings  of  the  Javanese  seem  in  large 
part  to  have  had  no  direct  connection  with  the  culture 
system  ;  they  were  results  of  a  faulty  political  organiza- 
tion. It  would  be  bad  faith  to  deny  these  facts.  It  is, 
however,  of  little  importance  to  admit  them.  A  culture 
system  inspired  with  benevolence  could  accomplish  good 
results,  but  it  would  be  the  most  expensive  means  of 
accomplishing  them  that  can  possibly  be  conceived.  It 
would  wreck  any  government  that  could  not  draw  on  un- 
limited funds  from  some  source  outside  the  field  of  the 
system's  operations.  Even  the  most  superficial  acquaint- 
ance with  the  history  of  the  Dutch  will  teach  the  fact 
that  they  made  most  of  their  money  from  cultures  by  a 
disproportion  between  burdens  imposed  and  benefits  ren- 
dered such  as  no  good  government  can  approve.  What 
revenue  they  got  without  a  disproportionate  sacrifice  of 
the  natives  could  have  been  got  as  well  by  modern  methods 


IX  THE   CULTURE   SYSTEM:   REFORM  341 

of  taxation,  as  their  later  history  shows.  There  is  no 
more  likelihood  that  modern  governments  will  introduce 
"  benevolent "  culture  systems  in  their  dependencies  than 
that  they  will  organize  production  on  the  methods  that 
Swift  described  as  existing  in  Laputa.  They  could  not 
afford  the  expense. 

It  is  out  of  fashion  nowadays  to  draw  moral  lessons 
from  history.  We  are  told  to  regard  the  facts  and  to 
let  the  motives  go.  Yet  to  the  present  writer  the  biggest 
fact  in  the  history  of  the  culture  system  is  the  motive  to 
its  establishment.  Selfishness  colored  the  whole  period. 
It  explains  the  sufferings  of  the  natives  under  cultures, 
and  it  explains  their  sufferings  under  the  faulty  political 
administration.  So  nowadays,  when  the  culture  system 
is  held  up  for  imitation  in  other  tropical  countries,  and 
we  are  told  that  it  will  both  bless  the  people  and  benefit 
the  treasury,  the  vital  question  is.  Which  comes  first  in 
the  mind  of  the  European  power  —  people  or  treasury  ? 
One  must  be  sacrificed,  —  which  will  it  be  ?  Egoism  and 
altruism  lead  to  divergent  results.  If  a  moral  lesson  can 
be  drawn  from  the  history  of  the  culture  system,  it  is  this  : 
that  selfishness,  even  of  an  international  kind,  does  not 
pay.  Seeley  was  right  not  only  when  he  said  that  it 
is  "  essentially  barbaric  that  one  community  should  be 
treated  as  the  property  of  another,  and  the  fruits  of  its 
industry  confiscated  not  in  return  for  benefits  conferred, 
but  by  some  absolute  right,  whether  of 'conquest  or  other- 
wise ";  he  was  right  too  when  he  said  that  such  a  relation 
is  "too  immoral  to  last."^  The  Dutch  made  money  for  a 
time,  but  they  sacrificed  their  permanent  interests  in  the 
process.    They  prevented  the  education  of  native  laborers, 

J  "  Expansion  of  England,"  Lond.,  1891,  66. 


342  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap,  ix 

they  prevented  organization  by  European  planters,  and 
the  revenue  that  they  got  was  no  compensation  for  the 
check  on  Java's  productive  power.  They  could  get  now 
a  greater  net  surplus  from  Java  than  they  ever  got  in  the 
time  of  the  culture  system  if  they  chose  to  raise  their 
demands  and  lower  their  returns  as  they  used  to  do. 


CHAPTER  X 

RECENT  ECONOMIC  POLICY 

[Note. — For  the  period  from  1870  to  the  present  I  have  made  no 
attempt  to  cover  the  sources,  comprised  largely  in  the  series  of  govern- 
ment documents  ;  I  have  used  a  recent  colonial  report  and  budget,  for  an 
index  of  present  conditions,  and  have  relied  for  statistical  information 
mainly  on  a  copy  of  the  colonial  Jaarcijfers.  The  Regeeringsalmanak 
gives  a  description  of  the  organization  of  government,  contains  im- 
portant laws  in  full  or  in  abstract,  and  has  some  valuable  statistics. 
Documentary  material  on  land  and  labor  policy  is  furnished  also  in  the 
publications  of  the  Institut  Colonial  International.  Standard  reference 
books  are  De  Louter's  Handleiding  and  the  "  Encyclopsedie  van  Neder- 
laudsch-Indie."  A.  Lawrence  Lowell,  "Colonial  Civil  Service,"  N.Y., 
1900,  gives  a  detailed  account  of  the  way  in  which  Dutch  colonial  officials 
are  educated  and  selected.  Chailley-Bert's  Java  is  an  interesting  and 
suggestive  criticism,  written  by  one  who  is  conversant  with  the  colonial 
problem  in  other  countries,  and  who  has  studied  conditions  in  Java  on  the 
spot.  Except  the  little  volumes  by  Boys  and  Jenks,  writings  by  other 
travellers  are  of  slight  importance  as  regards  topics  covered  here.  Peri- 
odical literature  in  this  period  is  voluminous,  and  I  have  based  my  work 
in  large  part  on  that.  For  treatment  of  some  topics  in  the  present  fiscal 
system,  more  extended  than  suited  the  purpose  of  this  book,  I  refer  to  an 
essay  by  me  in  the  Publications  of  the  American  Economic  Association, 
August,  1900,  third  series.  Vol.  I,  no.  3,  pp.  461-492.] 

rilHE  reluctance  of  the  government  to  give  up  the  sys- 
-■-  tem  of  forced  cultures  in  Java  can  be  explained  in 
part  by  the  natural  inertia  of  all  political  organizations,  by 
the  tendency  of  every  government  to  continue  in  the  line  to 
which  it  has  become  accustomed.  A  better  reason  for  the 
maintenance  of  the  system  is  to  be  found  in  the  revenue 
that  it  has  yielded,  so  long  as  the  conditions  of  the  world 
market  have  favored  one  or  another  of  the  many  crops  to 

343 


344  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

which  the  system  has  been  applied.  But  apart  from  these 
considerations  there  has  been  another  argument  constantly 
urged  in  favor  of  maintaining  forced  cultures  which  has 
had  immense  weight  in  delaying  the  passage  to  a  system 
of  free  cultivation.  The  argument  was  this,  that  under 
freedom  there  would  be  no  cultivation  of  export  articles 
at  all ;  that  the  native,  left  to  himself,  would  give  up  pro- 
ducing coffee  and  sugar  and  would  raise  nothing  more 
than  the  food  necessary  for  his  own  subsistence,  and  that 
the  people  of  Europe  would  lose  all  the  benefits  which 
the  natural  resources  of  Java,  if  properly  exploited,  could 
confer  upon  them. 

The  strength  of  this  argument  will  be  apparent  from  a 
brief  review  of  some  of  the  features  of  the  great  problem 
that  has  formed  the  stumbling-block  in  so  many  schemes 
of  tropical  colonization,  the  problem  of  labor. 

The  German  economist,  Roscher,  began  his  volume  on 
the  principles  of  political  economy  by  calling  attention  to 
the  wants  of  man  as  his  specially  human  characteristic. 
Every  man,  even  of  the  lowest  races,  is  separated  from 
brutes  by  wants  of  a  purely  material  character — the  need 
of  clothing  and  of  fire,  the  need  of  organization  imposed 
by  a  long  period  o:^  infancy,  that  has  done  so  much  to 
create  the  institution  of  marriage.  Roscher  justly  criti- 
cised the  saying  of  Seneca,  that  if  you  desired  any  one  to 
be  rich,  you  should  not  increase  his  riches  but  decrease  his 
wants,  as  a  principle  that  would  subvert  all  civilization. 

Civilized  peoples  owe  their  advancement  to  the  fact 
that  they  have  wanted  so  many  things  and  have  been 
willing  to  work  to  get  them.  The  need  of  things,  it 
has  been  said,  is  the  spring  that  keeps  the  clock-work 
of  society  going.     The  wants  of  a  civilized  man  are  so 


X  RECENT  ECONOMIC  POLICY  345 

great  that  he  can  satisfy  them  only  by  constant  labor 
and  by  subordination  to  the  strictest  discipline.  Society 
has  developed  its  present  complex  and  delicate  organiza- 
tion simply  because  no  other  organization  was  efficient 
enough  to  provide  men  with  the  objects  of  their  desires. 
Wants  have  come  first,  and  means  have  then  been  devised 
to  meet  them. 

Now  the  characteristic  of  the  native  of  the  tropics,  that 
is  of  prime  importance  when  he  is  regarded  in  his  rela- 
tions to  the  outside  civilized  and  commercial  world,  is  the 
smallness  of  his  wants.  If  we  can  believe  the  traditional 
descriptions  of  tropical  life,  he  may  pick  breakfast,  dinner, 
and  supper  from  a  tree  that  grows  wild  in  his  back  yard, 
he  may  clothe  himself  with  leaves  stripped  from  another 
tree,  and  build  his  house  by  a  day's  labor  on  another. 
Humboldt  was  assured,  in  his  American  travels,  that 
the  natives  would  never  amount  to  anything  as  long  as 
the  banana  tree  existed,  and  it  is  said  that  in  some  of  the 
West  India  islands  the  natives  could  not  be  got  to  work 
until  the  banana  tree  had  been  cut  down.  Nature  is  so 
bountiful  that  he  relies  almost  entirely  upon  her,  and  the 
educating  influence  of  labor  is  lost  to  him.  The  charac- 
teristic proverb  of  hot  countries  is  to  the  effect  that  it  is 
better  to  sleep  than  to  wake,  that  it  is  better  to  lie  down 
than  to  sit  up,  that  it  is  better  to  be  seated  than  to  stand, 
that  it  is  better  to  rest  than  to  work,  and  that  death  is 
better  than  all.^ 

^  Quoted  by  Jean  Barr^  Saint- Venant,  "  Des  colonies  modernes  sous  la 
zone  torride,"  Paris,  1802,  122.  It  is  proverbial  in  Java  that  the  native 
never  runs  when  he  can  stand,  never  stands  when  he  can  sit,  and  never 
sits  when  he  can  lie.  Nederburgh,  "De  onmondigheid  van  den  Javaan 
ten  aanzien  van  het  grondbezit,"  TNI.,  1878,  7  :  1  :  21.  Barr^  Saint- 
Venant  quotes  from  the  reports  of  the  French  intendants  a  striking 


346  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

The   native   of   the   tropics   finds   in   the    "bounty   of 
nature  "  so  full  a  satisfaction  of  his  wants  that  the  trader 
or  the  employer  has  little  hold  upon  him.     If  he  can,  by 
working  for   himself,    satisfy  all   his   needs,  there  is  no 
reason  why  he  should  bind  himself   to  work  for  others. 
Trader  or  employer  must  prove  to  him  that  he  wants 
something  before  he  can  be  argued  into  working  to  get 
it.     The  first  steps  in  economic  education  are  the  hard- 
est ;  while  the  wants  of  a  civilized  man  seem  unlimited, 
it  is  most  difficult  to  instil  a  single  new  one  in  a  savage. 
Traders  are  often  forced  to  make  gifts  to  create  a  desire 
for  more.     Newcomb   gives  in  his   political  economy  an 
instance  that  shows  how  cautious  we  must  be  in  apply- 
ing some   of   the  principles  of  modern  economic  theory 
to   uncivilized   people.     Traders  on  the  coast  of   South 
America,  desiring  to  call  out  an  increased   supply  of   a 
native  product,  doubled  the  amount  of   goods  that  they 
offered  for  it,  and  found  that  they  got,  instead  of  more, 
just  half  of  what  they  had  got  before.     A  precise  parallel, 
in  the  case  of   labor,  not  of  goods,  is  furnished   by  the 
experience  of  employers  of  native  laborers  in  Chihuahua, 
who  were  led  by  competition  among  themselves  to  raise 
wages  from  fifty  cents  to  one  dollar  a  day.     "  For  genera- 
tions these  people  had  fashioned  their  life  on  a  three- 
doUar-a-week  basis;    finding  themselves  with  the   three 
dollars   in  their   pockets  on   Wednesday  night,  nothing 
could  induce  them  to  work  Thursday,  Friday,  or  Satur- 
day."    The  only  use  that  they  could  imagine  for  the  sur- 

example  of  the  demoralizing  influence  of  the  tropics  on  uncivilized  peoples 
when  they  are  suddenly  released  from  the  pressure  to  work  :  the  annual 
exports  from  San  Domingo,  comparing  1789  with  1794-1796,  fell  from 
226,000,000  to  4,000,000  livres,  ib.,  51.  The  exports  of  the  two  negro 
republics  are  now  less  than  $20,000,000  a  year. 


X  RECENT  ECONOMIC   POLICY  347 

plus  was  gambling,  and  it  became  necessary  to  put  wages 
back  to  the  old  figure  to  get  the  men  to  work  six  days  in 
the  week.i  In  all  the  West  African  colonies,  says  Miss 
Kingsley,  there  is  not  a  single  thing  Europeans  can  sell  to 
the  natives  that  is  of  the  nature  of  a  true  necessity. ^ 

It  is  to  a  large  extent  the  difficulty  of  finding  a  basis 
of  exchange  with  uncivilized  people,  of  finding  something 
that  they  want  to  trade  for  their  products  or  labor,  and 
which  they  cannot  produce  themselves,  that  has  led  to 
the  establishment  and  maintenance  of  slavery  in  the  trop- 
ical regions  of  the  world.  It  leads  nowadays  to  the  in- 
troduction of  coolies,  natives  of  countries  where  the 
pressure  of  population  is  so  great  that  it  is  a  strain  to 
provide  even  the  bare  necessaries  of  life,  and  from  which 
the  natives  are  absolutely  forced  into  the  higher  organ- 
ization. The  importance  of  coolie  labor  at  the  present 
time  can  be  measured  by  the  fact,  shown  in  Ireland's 
statistics,  that  in  1896  over  four-fifths  of  the  total  trade 
between  the  United  Kingdom  and  the  British  tropical 
colonies  were  with  colonies  employing  imported  contract 
labor.^ 

1  Logan,  "Peonage  in  Mexico,"  Gunton's  Social  Economist,  N.Y., 
1893,  5  :  102. 

2  "  West  African  Studies,"  Lond.,  1899,  p.  339.  Tobacco  is  most 
important,  then  the  group  of  trade  articles,  gunpowder,  guns,  and  spirits, 
next  salt,  and  below  these  four  staples  come  Manchester  goods  and  mis- 
cellanies. Compare  the  list  of  imports  into  the  Congo  State,  in  Wauters, 
"L']fctat  ind^pendant  du  Congo,"  Bruxelles,  1899,  p.  409;  the  total 
amount  of  imports  for  native  consumption  is  not  8,000,000  francs,  of 
which  five-eighths  are  cloth.  The  few  Europeans  in  the  territory  imported 
a  nearly  equal  amount. 

8  Popular  Science  Monthly,  54  :  483.  Lagos  and  Bermuda,  in  which 
a  very  dense  population  affords  a  domestic  labor  supply,  are  included  in 
the  above  with  colonies  employing  coolie  labor,  but  do  not  greatly  affect 
the  total. 


348  THE  DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

Untrained  in  the  providence  that  is  made  necessary  in 
some  parts  of  the  world  by  the  very  alternations  of  sea- 
sons, partly  civilized  peoples  set  a  value  much  lower  on 
goods  to  be  received  or  consumed  in  the  future  than  on 
the  means  of  present  enjoyment.  Jagor  says  that  in  the 
Philippines  the  natives  would  help  harvest  the  rice  crop 
at  first  for  a  tenth  share  in  it,  but  that  Avhen  they  had 
satisfied  their  more  pressing  necessities,  they  had  little 
thought  of  securing  a  store  for  the  future,  and  the  price 
of  labor  rose  to  a  fifth,  a  third,  or  even  a  half  of  the  crop. 
A  savage  may  see  in  a  trader's  stock  something  that  he 
covets,  but  if  the  labor  required  to  procure  the  means  of 
purchase  must  be  spread  over  any  extended  period  of  time, 
he  will  not  have  the  heart  for  it ;  the  trader  may  come 
again  and  again  and  find  him  each  time  wanting  the  ware 
but  always  without  the  means  of  paying  for  it.  The 
trouble  with  the  monkeys,  says  Kipling,  is  that  they  for- 
get. Half -civilized  man  is  like  the  monkeys, — he  forgets, 
and  he  must  be  taught  to  remember. 

The  problem  of  establishing  economic  relations  with 
partly  civilized  peoples  would  be  a  more  difficult  one  if  it 
were  not  for  this  fact,  that  they  set  as  low  a  store  on 
future  labor  as  they  do  on  future  goods,  and  that  for  pres- 
ent enjoyment  they  are  willing  to  make  large  promises  of 
future  return  of  labor.  They  enter  into  debt  to  their 
employer,  and  then  first  are  they  bound  and  made  service- 
able to  the  modern  organization.  It  is  by  means  of  credit 
bondage  that  industrial  undertakings  have  been  estab- 
lished and  are  now  maintained  through  a  great  part  of  the 
tropical  and  semi-tropical  world. 

Without  proper  regulation  the  institution  is  liable  to 
serious  abuse ;  it  is  the  curse  of  some  half-civilized  pec- 


X  RECENT  ECONOMIC  POLICY  349 

pies  and  is  always  attended  with  dangers  when  applied 
to  these  peoples  in  contact  with  their  industrial  superiors. 
But  Wallace  goes  too  far  when  he  says^  of  this  debtor  and 
creditor  relation  between  natives  and  Europeans  that, 
while  it  extends  trade  for  a  time,  "it  demoralizes  the 
native,  checks  true  civilization,  and  does  not  lead  to  any 
permanent  increase  in  the  wealth  of  the  country,  so  that 
the  European  government  of  such  a  country  must  be  car- 
ried on  at  a  loss."  The  statement  is  not  borne  out  by 
experience.  On  the  other  hand  —  I  quote  again  from 
Wallace^ —  "  there  are  certain  stages  through  which  soci- 
ety must  pass,  in  its  onward  march  from  barbarism  to 
civilization.  Now  one  of  these  stages  has  always  been 
some  form  or  other  of  despotism,  such  as  feudalism,  or 
servitude,  or  a  despotic  paternal  government;  and  we 
have  every  reason  to  believe  that  it  is  not  possible  for 
humanity  to  leap  over  this  transition  epoch,  and  pass  at 
once  from  pure  savagery  to  pure  civilization."  Wallace 
thought  that  the  culture  system  was  the  longed-for  agent 
that  would  lead  the  natives  to  a  higher  civilization,-  but 
in  fact  even  at  the  time  when  he  wrote  that  system  was  on 
the  point  of  being  given  up,  and  the  "  despotism  "  that 
has  taken  its  place  is  one  based  on  economic  rather  than 
political  subjection.  With  all  its  possible  dangers  credit 
bondage  has  this  inestimable  merit,  that  it  requires  of 
the  State  only  the  regulation  that  is  the  State's  proper 
function ;  action  is  left  to  individuals,  and  the  power  of 

1  "Malay  Archipelago,"  106. 

2  76.,  264.  Compare  Wakefield,  "View  of  the  Art  of  Colonization," 
Lond.,  1849,  174  :  "Every  colony  that  has  prospered,  from  the  time  of 
Columbus  down  to  this  day  ...  has  enjoyed  in  some  measure  what  I 
have  termed  combination  and  constancy  of  labor.  They  enjoyed  it  by 
means  of  some  kind  of  slavery." 


350  THE  DUTCH   IN  JAVA  chap. 

the  State  being  thereby  conserved  suffices  for  such  regu- 
lation and  repression  as  may  be  necessary.^ 

This  bondage  for  debt  exists  in  many  different  coun- 
tries of  the  world  at  the  present  time,  as  a  means  of  hold- 
ing half-civilized  peoples  to  labor.  It  may  be  familiar  to 
American  readers  as  an  important  part  of  the  labor  organ- 
ization of  Mexico.  After  the  abolition  of  the  encomienda 
system,  by  which  the  Spanish  had  previously  tried  to  solve 
the  labor  problem,  the  Spanish  employer  "  managed  to  get 
the  workmen  into  his  debt,  and  to  procure  the  enactment 
of  laws  giving  him  the  right  to  retain  them  in  his  service 
until  the  debt  was  discharged  ;  then  he  furnished  bad  sup- 
plies at  the  highest  prices,  so  that  the  debt  was  never  paid 
and  the  Indian  remained  a  slave."  ^ 

The  institution  of  credit  bondage  was  a  common  one  in 
the  Malay  Archipelago  before  the  Dutch  arrived,  as  is 
shown  by  its  persistence  in  the  native  organization.  I 
have  referred  in  the  chapter  on  the  native  organization 
to  the  fact  that  one    of  the    Dutch   Governors  General 

1  An  interesting  recognition  of  this  truism  of  political  science,  as  I 
think  it  may  be  called,  can  be  found  in  a  report  dating  from  almost  the 
beginning  of  the  culture  system,  Merkus,  Nota,  February,  1831,  S.  van 
Deventer,  LS.,  2:  222.  A  very  vigorous  statement  of  the  need  of  some 
sort  of  pressure  to  force  natives  of  the  tropics  to  work  will  be  found  in 
Pfeil,  "  Studien  und  Beobachtungen  aus  der  Slidsee,"  Braunschweig, 
1899,  244. 

2  Logan,  "Peonage  in  Mexico,"  Gunton's  Social  Economist,  N.Y., 
1893.  The  system  is  described  also  by  Prince  A.  de  Iturbide,  "  Mexican 
haciendas  —  the  peon  system,"  North  American  Review,  1899, 168  :  427  ff.; 
the  debt  which  is  one  of  the  essential  features  of  the  system  is  usually 
$10  to  $30  at  the  start,  but  may  be  inherited  through  generations.  The 
fundamental  law  of  Mexico  prohibits  the  practice,  but  the  custom  is 
stronger  than  the  constitution.  Jagor  describes  as  existing  in  the  Philip- 
pines a  credit  bondage  similar  in  all  important  respects  to  that  found  in 
Java  and  the  other  Malay  Islands  ;  for  a  similar  institution  in  British 
India  see  Hunter,  "Rural  Bengal,"  233. 


X  RECENT  ECONOMIC   POLICY  351 

explained  the  subjection  of  the  common  people  to  their 
rulers  on  the  ground  that  the  latter  had  loaned  them 
money  which  they  were  never  able  to  repay,  though  always 
working  to  do  so.  If  the  economic  relation  of  debtor  and 
creditor  did  not  play  such  a  part  in  determining  the  polit- 
ical organization  as  might  appear  from  this  account,  it  is 
certain  that  members  of  the  ruling  class  were  very  often 
usurers,  and  that  they  loaned  frequently  on  the  security 
not  of  the  property  but  of  the  person  of  the  borrower.  Of 
the  importance  of  credit  bondage  in  the  native  social 
orgaiiization  there  is  no  question.  The  native  laws  of 
debt  were  much  more  severe  than  either  Hindu  or  Moham- 
medan law,  giving  to  the  creditor  full  power  over  the  per- 
son of  a  debtor  who  was  unable  to  meet  his  engagements, 
and  even  over  the  persons  of  the  debtor'*s  family.  The 
debtor's  status  was  not  exactly  that  of  a  slave,  for  his 
freedom  was  merely  suspended,  not  destroyed,  and  if  he 
could  secure  the  means  to  pay  the  debt,  he  could  become 
free,  or  at  least  change  his  master  for  a  new  one.  But  he 
was  bound  to  the  service  of  the  creditor,  and  in  practice 
there  was  great  danger  that  the  status  would  become  per- 
petual. It  has  been  known  to  last  for  generations^  and 
whole  classes  of  so-called  slaves  in  the  Malay  Archipelago 
have  been  traced  back  to  an  origin  in  bondage  for  debt.^ 

1  Even  at  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century  Daendels  found 
thousands  of  the  so-called  "  pandelings  "  or  credit  bondmen  in  one  of  the 
residencies  of  Java.  Staat,  10.  For  a  general  discussion  of  the  institu- 
tion of  credit  bondage  see  Wilken,  "  Het  pandrecht  bij  de  volken  van  den 
Indischen  archipel,"  Bijd.  TLV.,  1888,  5:3:  574.  For  other  statements 
in  the  text  see  that  article,  Van  den  Berg,  "  De  afwijkingen  van  het 
Mohammadaansche  vermogensrecht  op  Java  en  Madoera,"  ib.,  1897,  6: 
3:  124  ff.,  and  Verwey,  "Jets  over  het  contractueel  pandelingschap  en 
de  bestrijding  dezer  instelling  in  de  Nederlandsch-Indische  wetgeving," 
ib.,  1893,  5  :  8 :  234  ff.    The  interference  of  the  Dutch  with  this  insti- 


352  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

The  institution  of  credit  bondage,  as  it  existed  in  the 
native  organization,  was  not  one  that  could  be  recognized 
and  maintained  by  the  Dutcli.  The  relation  of  master 
and  servant  originated  commonly  in  a  loan  for  consump- 
tion and  led  to  no  useful  economic  results,  so  by  a  suc- 
cession of  enactments  continuing  far  into  the  nineteenth 
century  bondage  for  debt  was  prohibited  and  has  finally 
been  abolished  in  Java.  At  the  same  time  this  institu- 
tion suggests  the  means  by  which  the  Dutch  have  solved 
the  problem  of  "  free "  labor  in  Java ;  they  found  no 
better  way  to  secure  the  necessary  supply  of  labor  than  a 
system  of  credit  advances  by  which  the  improvident  and 
irresponsible  native  is  bound  fast  for  a  certain  limited 
time.  In  touching  on  this  institution  of  credit  bondage 
I  have  anticipated  the  final  settlement  that  the  Dutch 
have  found  for  their  difficulties.  The  transition  to  this 
economic  solution  of  the  problem,  from  the  political  or- 
ganization of  labor  as  it  existed  during  the  period  of  the 
culture  system,  was  not  immediate.  Long  after  the  cul- 
ture system  was  in  name  abolished  its  effects  were  felt  as 
elements  in  the  labor  situation,  and  they  must  be  noticed 
in  this  place. 

Supporters  of  the  culture  system  asserted  that,  aside 
from  effecting  an  increase  in  the  production  of  certain 
articles,  it  was  valuable  for  its  educational  influence.  It 
was  supposed  to  discipline  the  natives  by  constraining  them 
to  labor.  Some  authorities,  who  deprecated  its  bad  influ- 
ence in  many  directions,  expressed  themselves  in  favor  of 
it  as  a  temporary  but  necessary  stage  in  the  development 

tution  was  one  of  the  causes  of  the  present  war  in  Atjeh.  Van  der  Lith, 
"  Rechtsverhaltnisse  in Nied.  Ind.,"  Jahrbuch  f.  vergl.  Rechtswissenschaft, 
1898,  4 :  15. 


X  EECENT  ECONOMIC  POLICY  353 

of  free  contract  relations  between  European  employers 
and  native  laborers.  It  is  probable  that  in  fact  the  sys- 
tem was  of  some  benefit  in  impressing  on  the  minds  of 
the  natives  the  obligation  of  steady  work  under  certain 
circumstances.  But  the  culture  system  formed  the  worst 
possible  introduction  to  a  system  of  free  labor  in  so  far  as 
regards  the  impression  that  it  left  on  the  natives  as  to 
the  real  reason  for  labor.  They  worked  because  they 
had  to,  not  because  they  wanted  to,  in  fear  of  punishment 
and  not  for  hope  of  reward.  The  culture  system  edu- 
cated them  as  producers,  not  as  consumers  ;i  it  gave  them 
the  capacity  for  labor  without  the  motive  for  applying  it, 
for  it  created  in  them  no  wants  that  they  had  not  had 
before.  The  ships  that  took  tropical  products  to  the 
Netherlands  returned  to  Java  in  ballast  during  the  opera- 
tion of  the  culture  system  ;  the  coffee  and  sugar  were  a 
tribute  for  which  Europe  made  no  return.  It  was  per- 
fectly natural  that  the  natives  who  saw  the  ships  come 
empty  should  be  willing  to  let  them  go  away  in  the  same 
condition.  After  each  step,  therefore,  in  the  abolition  of 
the  culture  system,  the  natives  tended,  for  a  time  at  least, 
to  revert  to  their  former  hand-to-mouth  system  of  pro- 
duction, that  brought  them  in  as  much  as  they  had  been 
accustomed  to  receive  and  cost  them  much  less  labor. ^ 

1  "  It  is  not  money  that  the  Javanese  need,  but  the  faculty  of  using  it," 
said  a  man  who  had  a  good  acquaintance  with  the  free  laborers  about  the 
time  when  the  culture  system  was  declining.  According  to  his  experi- 
ence the  only  thing  that  would  tempt  laborers  to  work  was  the  desire  for 
opium  or  the  want  of  money  for  gambling.  De  Economist,  1862,  Bij- 
blad,  333. 

2  When  the  forced  services  in  the  clove  culture  were  abolished  in  1850, 
"  in  spite  of  the  advantages  offered  to  them,  the  majority  of  the  freedmen 
declined  to  engage  themselves  as  free  laborers."  Ward,  Report  on  the 
Progress  of  Neth.  E.  I.,  in  Rep.  of  H.  M.  Sec.  of  Embassy,  Lond.,  1863, 

2a 


364  THE    DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

European  employers  found  it  impossible  to  get  the 
necessary  supply  of  labor  without  maintaining  the  prac- 
tice, current  under  the  culture  system,  of  relying  upon 
official  pressure  rather  than  on  the  native's  sense  of  his 
own  advantage,  to  lead  him  to  work.  An  author  who 
had  been  in  the  Dutch  official  service,  but  who  was  at 
the  time  of  writing  a  tobacco  planter,  exposed  the  fallacy 
of  the  idea  that  freedom  of  contract  in  labor  relations 
was  established  at  a  stroke.  The  native  overseers  on  the 
plantations  secured  the  good-will  of  the  district  chief, 
the  native  official  next  above  the  village  head-men  in 
rank,  and  through  his  influence  got  any  number  of  labor- 
ers desired.  Another  observer,  writing  at  the  same  time, 
describes  political  influence  as  the  determining  factor  in 
the  chance  of  starting  any  undertaking.  All  dej)ended 
on  the  attitude  taken  by  the  Dutch  and  native  officials  ; 
if  they  were  favorable  to  the  undertaking,  the  people 
obediently  made  the  desired  contracts.  As  a  natural 
result  of  the  way  in  which  the  laborers  were  engaged, 
they  proved  slippery  and  unreliable,  seeking  every  op- 
portunity to  evade  their  obligations.^  The  system  by 
which  contracts  could  be  made  with  a  whole  village  at 
once  tended  to  increase  the  chance  for  an  abuse  of  politi- 
cal power.  After  1863  the  contracts  had  in  form  to  be 
with  individuals,  but  the  influence  of  the  chiefs  still  re- 
mained  an  important  or   decisive  element   in   the   labor 

6  :  145.  Cf.  Bickmore,  "Travels  in  the  E.  I.  Arch.,"  N.Y.,  1869,  for  a 
description  of  affairs  in  Amboyna.  D'AImeida,  "Life  in  Java,"  1  :  269, 
says  that  the  natives  in  Boedoeran  were  emancipated  from  forced  services 
in  cutting  and  carrying  cane  a  few  days  before  his  arrival  there  ;  he  found 
the  industry  in  straits  for  lack  of  laborers,  and  the  cane  often  left  till 
over-ripe. 

1  De  Economist,  1862,  Bijblad,  347,  334. 


X  RECENT  ECONOMIC  POLICY  355 

question,  especially  in  districts  where  communal  property 
prevailed.  In  1882  a  writer  gave  as  the  impression  left 
by  a  journey  through  Java  his  belief  that  the  problem  of 
securing  labor  without  the  connivance  of  the  head-men 
had  been  solved,  but  even  then  all  authorities  did  not 
agree  with  him.^ 

In  their  relations  with  the  really  free  laborers  of  Java, 
those  who  are  not  subject  to  the  influence  of  some  political 
chief,  European  employers  have  experienced  two  great 
difficulties,  which  will  now  be  considered  separately. 

At  the  start  the  difficulty  is  encountered  of  getting  men 
to  bind  themselves  to  work  for  wages  who  see  any  chance 
to  continue  their  independent  existence.  Travellers  in 
Java  are  all  struck  with  the  productiveness  of  the  island, 
with  the  ease  with  which  the  natives  can  manage  to  live. 
In  spite  of  the  dense  population,  reaching  in  1891  a  pro- 
portion equivalent  to  over  two  persons  to  the  cultivated 
acre,  there  is  scarcely  yet  a  serious  pressure  of  population 
on  subsistence  ;  in  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century 
the  population  was  only  half  what  it  is  now  and  there 
was  much  more  free  land  available.  The  class  of  natives 
who  had  neither  land  nor  a  trade  to  support  them  and 
who  served  others  for  hire  was  not  large  in  numbers  and 
was  absorbed  to  a  considerable  extent  in  the  internal 
organization  of  the  village.  The  scale  of  living  of  the 
average  cultivator  would  appear  hopelessly  low  if  meas- 
ured by  western  standards  ;  the  total  personal  property  of 
a  family,  including  house,  furniture,  clothing,  and  imple- 

1  De  Economist,  1882,  2  :  1122.  Van  Rees,  "  Hervormingsplannen,  in 
1863  aan  den  Gouverneur-Generaal  Sloet  aanbevolen,"  Ind.  Gids,  1885, 
1 :  745,  speaks  of  the  political  influence  exercised  in  the  making  of 
contracts  as  a  point  then  needing  reform. 


356  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

ments,  might  be  worth  only  a  few  dollars,  say  five  or  ten, 
in  our  currency.^  Where  wants  are  small,  however,  a  low 
scale  of  life  may  satisfy,  and  in  fact  among  the  Javanese 
the  lower  the  scale  of  life  the  more  likely  they  are  to  rest 
content  with  it  so  long  as  they  are  not  absolutely  starving. 
In  practice  it  has  been  found  impossible  to  secure  the 
services  of  the  native  population  by  any  appeal  to  an 
ambition  to  better  themselves  and  raise  their  standard. 
Nothing  less  than  immediate  material  enjoyment  will  stir 
them  from  their  indolent  routine.  As  a  result,  it  is  the 
universal  practice  among  employers  to  offer  a  large  part 
of  the  wages  for  any  period  in  advance  ;  if  the  native 
takes  the  bait,  he  can  be  held  to  labor  (in  theory,  at  least) 
until  he  has  worked  out  the  debt  that  he  has  incurred. 
The  system  of  advances  to  secure  the  services  of  laborers 
is  described  as  universal  down  to  the  present  time.  Em- 
ployers and  officials  deplore  it,  but  recognize  its  necessity  ; 
even  the  government  makes  advances  when  it  requires  the 
services  of  wage  laborer s.^     As  an  example  of  the  process 


1  For  a  description  of  the  standard  of  life  of  the  Javanese,  and  estimates 
of  the  value  of  their  property  see  Raffles,  Hist.,  1 :  88;  TNI.,  1873,  2: 1: 127; 
and  some  excellent  articles  by  Poensen  in  Mededeelingen  Ned.  Zend., 
"Jets  over  het  Javaansche  gezin,"  1887,  Vol.  31,  esp.  p.  221 ;  "Jets  over 
de  Javaansche  desa,"  1893-1894,  Vols.  37-38.  A  good  idea  of  the  penury 
of  the  life  of  the  common  people  is  given  by  the  description  in  S.  Coolsma, 
"  "West  Java,"  Rotterdam,  1879,  p.  120  ff. 

2  See  especially  "  Vorschotten  bij  de  tabaks  kultuur,"  TNI.,  1861, 
23:2:157ff. ;  Pol,  "  Indische  adviezen  in  de  Staten  Generaal,"  De  Gids, 
1877,  2  :  257  ff.  A  number  of  reports  from  Dutch  officials  are  quoted  there 
(p.  281),  in  which  the  system  is  described  as  a  "necessary  evil,"  "demoral- 
izing but  unavoidable,"  etc.  Peelen,  De  Gids,  1893,  1  :  392,  speaks  of  the 
system  as  "een  ware  kanker,"  but  says  that  it  is  practically  impossible 
to  get  laborers  without  advances.  The  sugar  contract  cited  is  from  Van 
den  Berg,  "  De  afwijkingen  van  het  Mohammedaansche  vermogensrecht 
op  Java  en  Madoera,"  Bijdragen  TLV.,  1897,  6:3:  127. 


X  RECENT  ECONOMIC   POLICY  367 

the  following  contract  can  be  cited,  long  in  use  by  sugar 
planters  to  effect  the  transport  of  the  cane.  The  advance 
figures  as  the  price  of  the  cart  and  draught  animals,  which 
the  native  declares  to  have  sold  to  the  employer  with  the 
right  reserved  to  himself  to  buy  them  back  at  the  end  of 
the  season,  and  under  condition  that  he  shall  have  the  use 
of  them  in  the  meantime.  The  transport  charges  are  paid 
for  only  one  day  out  of  five  or  seven,  and  the  rest  goes  to 
the  repurchase  of  the  outfit ;  if  it  is  not  enough  at  the  end 
of  the  season  to  repay  the  original  advance,  the  debt  will 
run  over  to  the  next  year.  This  contract  is  peculiar  in 
that  the  employer  has  some  security  for  the  advance  that 
he  makes.  In  the  case  of  ordinary  labor  contracts  he  has 
only  the  person  of  the  native,  and  these  contracts  are  the 
most  common  of  all. 

It  is  evident  that  this  system  could  readily  lead  to  a 
permanent  subjection  of  the  native  to  the  European  em- 
ployer, like  the  credit  bondage  that  was  formerly  common 
in  the  native  organization.  In  securing  laborers  for  the 
Spice  Islands,  who  were  to  receive  wages  of  6  gulden  a 
month,  it  was  customary  to  pay  50  to  100  gulden  in  ad- 
vance,^  and  a  case  is  given  in  which  a  cook,  whose  wages 
were  to  be  1  gulden  a  month,  was  given  an  advance  of  30 
gulden  at  the  time  when  he  was  engaged  —  nearly  three 
years'  pay.  The  government  intervenes  to  protect  the 
laborers  by  a  regulation  prescribing  that  contracts  cannot 
be  made  for  a  term  exceeding  five  years,  and  that  they 
must  contain  full  specifications  of  the  services  to  be  ren- 
dered and  the  pay  to  be  given.  Every  contract  must  be 
recorded  with  the  government,  and  its  terms  are  investi- 

1  Lans,  "  Rosengain,"  Rotterdam,  1872,  p.  16  ;  Van  der  Linden,  "  Banda 
en  zijne  bewoners,"  Dordrecht,  1873,  p.  45. 


358  THE   DUTCH   IN  JAVA  chap. 

gated,  and  their  proper  fulfilment  assured  by  government 
officials.^ 

In  fact,  however,  the  natives  seem  competent  to  protect 
themselves   against   European   employers.      The    second 
great  difficulty  experienced  by  planters  in  their  relations 
with  the  laborers  is  the  tendency  of  the  natives  to  break 
their  contracts   and  leave  their  work,  whether  for  good 
reasons  or  for  no  apparent  reason  at  all.      Under  the  cul- 
ture system,  which  identified  the  economic  and  political 
organization,  and  applied  all  the  police  power  of  the  state 
to  hold  laborers  to  their  work,  it  was  possible  to  check 
the    untrustworthiness    and    fitfulness    of   the    natives. 
Whatever  influence  the  discipline  of  the  system  may  have 
had,  it  certainly  did  not  effect  any  radical  reform  in  their 
character.     After   its   abolition   laborers  would  take  ad- 
vances on   their   wages   and  then  desert ;  some  laborers 
hired  themselves  to  two  or  three  undertakings  at  once  to 
get  the  advances.     When  they  did  not  leave  an  undertak- 
ing entirely,  they  worked  only  as  the  fancy  seized  them  ; 
in  one  residency  an  official  report  stated  that  a  man  who 
would  work  fifteen  or  twenty  days  in  a  month  was  con- 
sidered a  good  hand.      The  loss  caused  to  planters  by  the 
lack  of  the  workmen  on  whom  they  had  counted,  and  often 
at  the  very  time  when  their  labor  was  most  needed,  led  in 
1872   to   the  publication  of   an  ordinance  punishing  the 
breach  of  a  labor  contract  with  a  fine  of  16  to  25  florins, 
or  forced  labor  on  public  works  for  seven  to  twelve  days. 
The  justification  of  the  ordinance  is  apparent  in  the  fact 
that  during  three  years  of  the  period  in  which  it  was  in 
force  almost  nine  thousand  cases  of   breach  of    contract 
were  punished  under  its  provisions.     Opinion  in  Java  was 
1  De  Louter,  "  Handleiding,"  p.  618. 


X  RECENT  ECONOMIC  POLICY  360 

practically  unanimous  in  upholding  the  ordinance  ;  mem- 
bers both  of  the  commercial  and  of  the  official  classes 
agreed  in  regarding  it  as  a  necessary  corrective  of  the 
faults  of  native  labor.  To  theorists  in  the  Netherlands, 
however,  the  regulation  seemed  to  disguise  a  new  form  of 
credit  bondage,  by  which  the  freedom  of  natives  was  sac- 
rificed to  the  employer  ;  fault  too  was  found  with  tlie  fact 
that  cases  involving  the  breach  of  a  labor  contract  could 
be  tried  by  petty  judges  and  by  administrative  officials. 
In  1877  the  Second  Chamber  of  the  States  General  passed 
a  resolution  against  the  ordinance  that  led  to  its  repeal  ; 
since  1879  cases  of  the  breach  of  labor  contracts  have  had 
to  be  brought  before  regular  tribunals,  and  though  tlie 
penalty  has  been  made  more  severe,  it  has  been  necessary 
for  conviction  to  prove  that  the  native  intended  to  desert 
at  the  time  when  he  made  the  contract,  a  point  very  hard 
to  establish.  The  bad  results  on  the  economic  organiza- 
tion were  not  slow  in  showing  themselves,  and  down  to  the 
present  time  complaints  and  agitation  for  a  reform  in  the 
legislation  have  been  increasing. 

This  action  of  the  States  General  is  an  excellent  ex- 
ample of  the  mischief  that  doctrinaires  can  work  when 
they  interfere  in  the  management  of  affairs  which  they 
do  not  understand.  Pfeil  describes  properly  this  question 
of  punishment  for  breach  of  a  labor  contract  as  one  that 
from  a  distance  looks  simple,  but  in  practice  is  extraor- 
dinarily difficult  of  solution.  It  is  of  the  greatest  im- 
portance in  the  economic  development  of  a  tropical 
dependency.  The  motives  of  the  legislators  were 
undoubtedly  good ;  they  were  the  same  that  led  to  a 
reform  of  the  culture  system.  The  legislators  did  not, 
however,  realize,  as  perhaps  they  never  will,  that  people 


360  THE  DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

cannot  pass  at  one  step  from  a  low  to  a  high  organization. 
To  abolish  the  culture  system  was  a  good  thing ;  to  hope 
to  establish  in  its  place  a  completely  modern  system  was 
folly.  The  new  system  could  be  better  than  the  culture 
system,  but  it  must  not  be  too  good  to  be  true.^ 

Individual  natives,  not  bound  by  contract  to  a  planter, 
have  shown  little  desire  or  ability  to  produce  for  the 
European  market.  Java  presents  in  this  respect  a  con- 
trast to  British  India,  and  the  cause  is  apparently  the 
same  as  that  of  so  many  other  contrasts  between  the  two 
countries,  the  greater  productiveness  of  the  land  in  Java, 
and  the  lack  of  pressure  on  the  population.  Chinese 
traders  scour  the  country  for  export  products,  but  the 
total  amount  thus  brought  into  the  channels  of  the 
world's  trade  is  small  in  comparison  with  the  amount 
that  is  produced  under  the  direction  of  planters. ^ 

The  Chinese  deserve  special  consideration  in  this  study 

1  For  the  text  of  the  legislation  see  "  Lam  ain  d'ceuvre  aux  colonies," 
Pub.  de  I'Inst.  Col.  Internat.,  Paris,  1895,  1  :  510  ff.  ;  "  Het  koninklijk 
besluit  van  den  17  Mei,  1879,"  TXI.,  1880,  9  :  2  :  405  ff.  The  latter  article 
has  abundant  material  on  which  to  base  a  criticism  of  the  policy.  For 
other  points  in  the  text  see  Pol,  "  Ind.  adviezen,"  De  Gids,  1877,  3  :  258, 
261,  273;  De  Economist,  1878,  1  :  392  ff.;  1891,  1  :  386;  Pfeil,  Sudsee,  252. 
Peelen,  De  Economist,  1893,  1  :  394,  hoped  for  a  reimposition  of  the  pen- 
alty, as  the  government  had  announced  that  it  was  not  averse  to  such 
action,  but  nothing  has  been  done,  to  judge  from  the  article  Overeenkom- 
sten  in  the  Encyc.  NX.,  published  a  year  or  so  ago. 

2  It  is  estimated  that  except  for  rice,  kapok  ("silk-cotton"),  hides, 
and  the  pepper  and  forest  products  of  the  Outer  Possessions,  amounting  to 
little  over  5,000,000  gulden  in  a  total  of  over  200,000,000  gulden,  Java 
has  not  a  single  export  that  is  not  produced  under  the  management  of 
Europeans.  Van  den  Berg,  "  Java's  bevolking  en  Java's  bebouwing,"  De 
Economist,  1894,  1 :  29,  It  is  po-ssible  that  this  estimate  does  not  include 
the  native-grown  coffee.  It  is  found  now  that  when  natives  are  freed  from 
the  obligation  of  growing  coffee,  they  let  the  crop  decline  in  quantity  and 
quality.     "  Begrooting  van  Ned.  Ind.,"  1900,  Bijlage,  35,  p.  7. 


X  RECENT  ECONOMIC  POLICY  361 

of  the  organization  of  production  in  Java.  They  form 
only  about  one  per  cent  of  the  population,  but  they  have 
an  importance  disproportionate  to  the  place  that  they  take 
in  the  census  enumeration.  With  qualities  differing  from 
those  of  both  natives  and  Europeans,  they  form  a  link 
between  the  two  races,  that  alone  would  be  separated  by 
an  almost  hopeless  distance  ;  they  are  the  natural  middle- 
men of  the  East.  Of  all  the  Chinese  in  Java  very  few 
are  coolies  or  field-laborers;  they  live  by  their  brains, 
not  by  their  hands.  They  are  a  permanent  element  of 
the  population,  with  a  settled  residence  and  a  family 
life  that  has  been  established  for  generations.  Whatever 
their  general  moral  character  may  be,  —  no  two  authors 
agree  in  describing  it,  —  there  can  be  no  question  as  to 
their  economic  virtues.  In  contrast  to  the  natives  the 
Chinese  have  tastes  which,  if  not  refined,  are  at  least 
expensive.  Those  who  can  afford  it  love  to  live  in  style, 
impressing  the  rest  of  the  world  with  their  houses  and 
their  equipages,  and  even  the  poorer  ones  seek  what 
luxury  they  can  afford.  All  love  enjoyment,  and — this 
is  the  important  point  —  all  are  willing  to  work  for  it. 
Their  steadiness  and  intelligence  put  them  on  a  plane 
above  the  natives,  who  have  never  shown  the  ability  to 
compete  with  them  on  equal  terms  in  trade  or  industry. 
They  seem  to  lack  the  breadth  and  boldness  of  conception 
that  would  enable  them  to  enter  large  enterprises  as  rivals 
of  the  Europeans,  but  between  the  two  races  they  have 
an  assured  position. 

In  the  early  history  of  the  Dutch  in  Java  the  Chinese 
appear  most  prominently  as  political  agents  of  the  gov- 
ernment, especially  as  tax  farmers.  Their  oppressions 
were  in  some  cases  horrible,  but  the  fault  was  no  more 


362  THE   DUTCH   IN  JAVA  chap. 

theirs  than  that  of  the  government  they  served ;  they 
were  efficieut,  at  any  rate,  and  under  proper  regulation 
they  were  of  great  service  in  developing  the  organization. 
Even  in  the  eighteenth  century  they  were  recognized  as  in- 
dispensable in  their  capacity  of  manufacturers,  traders,  and 
money-lenders;  they  alone  showed  the  ability  to  stimu- 
late production,  not  by  political  pressure,  but  by  economic 
means  such  as  characterize  the  modern  system  of  labor. ^ 

In  modern  times  the  Chinese  have  lost  much  of  their 
importance  as  tax  farmers,  but  their  place  in  the  com- 
mercial organization  is  secure.  Business  houses  in  Java 
find  them  indispensable  in  marketing  the  goods  imported 
for  native  consumption ;  it  is  only  they  who  have  the 
patience  and  cunning  fitting  them  to  bargain  with  the 
petty  agents  who  enter  into  direct  relations  with 
the  native  consumers.  The  Europeans  have  been  loud 
and  constant  in  their  complaints  of  the  business  methods 
of  the  Chinese,  whose  frequent  bankruptcies  are  notori- 
ous and  are  charged  with  being  often  fraudulent.  But, 
in  spite  of  everything,  European  merchants  cannot 
do  without  the  Chinese ;  they  have  before  them  the 
dilemma  of  doing  business  with  the  Chinese  or  of  doing 
no  business  at  all.^ 

1  Mossel,  "  Aanmerkingen,"  1751,  De  Jonge,  Opk.,  10  :  254  ;  Wiese  on 
Hogendorp's  Bericht,  ib.,  13:  62  ("De  onentbeerlijkheid  van  dit  Volk 
hier  te  land  is  algemeen  erkend");  report  from  Demak,  1805,  in  "  Rijst- 
kultuur  op  Java,"  Bijd.  TLV.,  1854,  1 :  2  :  43.  Raffles  found  all  internal 
trade  in  their  hands  and  said  that  they  v?ere  the  life  and  soul  of  commerce. 
Hist.,  1:  82,  222  ff. 

2  "De  Kali  Bazaar  te  Batavia,"  De  Economist,  1862,  Bijblad ;  Mees, 
"  De  Indische  groothandel  en  de  Chineesche  lijnwaadhandel,"  De  Econo- 
mist, 1884,  i.  The  president  of  the  Java  Bank,  in  his  annual  report  on  the 
state  of  the  market  (Kol.  Verslag,  1898,  Bijlage,  MM.),  complained  of  the 
depression  in  the  import  trade  as  largely  a  result  of  the  untrustworthiness 
of  the  middlemen  ;  failures  of  the  Chinese  had  not  been  so  numerous  in 


X  RECENT  ECONOMIC  POLICY  863 

The  prominence  that  has  been  given  to  the  Chinese  in 
their  relations  with  European  merchants  should  not  dis- 
tract attention  from  the  other  side  of  their  functions, 
really  more  important,  their  dealings  with  the  natives. 
The  position  that  they  have  held  under  the  government 
in  the  past  has  assured  them  the  establishment  of  relations 
with  the  people  in  all  parts  of  the  island  ;  every  pawnshop 
and  every  opium  agency  is  the  nucleus  of  a  little  commer- 
cial organization.  Chinese  peddlers  vend  their  wares 
throughout  the  country,  and  Chinese  traders  pervade  the 
markets  where  most  of  the  native  trading  is  done.  They 
sell  everything  that  can  tempt  the  native  to  buy,  manu- 
factured wares  and  ready-made  clothing,  drugs  and  chemi- 
cals for  dyeing,  and  all  sorts  of  "notions."  Some  come  to 
the  market  with  bags  of  copper  coins  to  buy  the  native 
produce,  and  some  do  not  appear  at  all,  but  wait  from  the 
early  dawn  at  convenient  cross-roads  to  forestall  the  mar- 
ket by  buying  up  the  articles  that  are  being  carried  there 
for  sale.  The  petty  trade  is  not  confined  to  Chinese,  but 
is  carried  on  most  successfully  by  them ;  the  natives  seem 
unable  to  compete  with  them  on  equal  terms,  and  are 
driven  into  less  remunerative  branches  of  the  trade,  or 
become  dependent  agents. ^ 

1897  as  in  preceding  years,  but  still  caused  many  losses.  An  idea  of  the 
economic  importance  of  the  Chinese  in  Java  can  be  given  by  some  figures 
from  a  recent  colonial  report ;  of  seventy-eight  stock  companies  sanc- 
tioned by  the  government  in  1897  fifteen  included  Chinese,  and  the  num- 
ber of  Chinese  depositors  in  the  principal  savings  banks  is  about  equal  to 
that  of  natives,  in  spite  of  the  small  proportion  that  they  form  of  the 
population.  Cachet,  "  Een  jaar  op  reis,"  Amsterdam,  1896,  630,  says  that 
the  traveller  finds  a  better  stock  in  the  Chinese  shops  than  in  any  others, 
is  served  more  quickly  and  can  buy  more  cheaply  in  them. 

1  The  best  references  for  the  place  taken  by  the  Chinese  in  the  native 
organization  are  Poensen,  "  Naar  en  op  de  pasar,"  Mededeelingen  van  wege 
het  Nederlandsche  Zendelinggenootschap,   Rotterdam,  1882,  26 :  1-30 ; 


364  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

The  Chinese  are  always  represented  as  great  sinners 
in  their  relations  with  the  natives,  overreaching  them  in 
every  way ;  they  cheat  in  trade,  advance  money  at  usuri- 
ous interest,  and  exploit  their  victims  sometimes  merci- 
lessly. These  facts  cannot  be  denied,  and  yet  it  is  very 
easy  to  base  a  false  inference  on  them.  The  natives  and 
the  native  organization  are  to  blame  rather  than  the 
Chinaman.  The  Chinese  take  much  the  same  position  in 
modern  Java  that  the  Jev/s  took  in  mediaeval  Europe ;  they 
are  giving  the  natives  some  primary  economic  education, 
and  they  are  hated  for  it  just  as  the  Jews  were  hated. 

The  modern  world  looks  with  too  little  sympathy  on 
the  distrust  and  dislike  of  the  middleman  that  are  charac- 
teristic of  primitive  communities.  In  our  environment  of 
competition  and  market  prices  we  are  apt  to  forget  how 
necessary  is  friction  in  the  beginnings  of  trade,  and  how 
surely  ill  feeling  grows  out  of  it.  Every  bargain  is  a 
personal  contest;  the  merchant  takes  all  that  his  own 
strength  or  the  weakness  of  the  seller  permits  him,  with- 
out fear  of  a  future  loss  of  custom  to  counterbalance  the 
present  gain.  Without  a  market  a  one-price  system  is 
impossible ;    without   a   one-price   system   ill   feeling    is 


Beijerman,  "Jets  over  de  Chineezen  in  Ned.  Ind.,"  ib.,  1885,  29  :  1-25. 
Jenks,  Report,  55,  157,  in  describing  tlie  restrictions  to  wliicli  the  Chinese 
are  subjected  for  the  protection  of  the  natives,  implies  that  a  large  part  of 
the  native  population  is  preserved  from  contact  v?ith  Chinese  traders.  This 
was  certainly  not  so  in  the  past,  as  can  be  learned  from  the  articles  cited, 
on  which  I  have  based  ray  description.  De  Louter  says,  it  is  true,  that 
the  tendency  of  late  has  been  toward  a  stricter  enforcement  of  the  regu- 
lations limiting  the  free  movement  of  the  Chinese  ("  Handleiding,"  119, 
note  3);  but  there  are  a  great  many  towns  in  which  the  Chinese  can 
reside  (see  list,  in  "  Regeeringsalmanak,"  1899,  Bijlage  X),  and  I  should 
suppose  it  to  be  very  difficult  for  the  government  to  carry  out  any  pro- 
hibitions of  peddling  to  the  letter. 


X  RECENT  ECONOMIC  POLICY  366 

inevitable.  Our  ancestors  found  it  so  in  early  New  Eng- 
land, and  no  amount  of  legislation  could  prevent  the 
"  extortion  "  practised  on  vi^eaker  members  of  the  commu- 
nity by  traders  who  were  of  the  same  blood  and  religion. 
The  Chinese  have  been  disliked  in  Java  not  because  they 
were  Chinese,  but  because  they  were  tax-gatherers,  money- 
lenders, and  traders,  and  men  of  other  races  in  their  posi- 
tion would  have  been  no  better  off.  Their  competitors  in 
the  petty  trade  in  Java,  the  Indo-Arabs,  of  the  same  reli- 
gion as  the  natives,  are  even  more  disliked.  The  Javanese 
have  a  saying  by  which  they  contrast  the  two  races,  "  They 
both  bleed  us,  but  the  Moor  hurts." 

The  Chinese  have  always  been  unpopular  in  the  East, 
and  will  always  be,  so  long  as  they  fill  their  present  posi- 
tion of  middlemen.  The  idea  of  excluding  them  is  an  old 
one  in  the  history  of  Java,  and  attempts  have  sometimes 
been  made  to  put  it  into  practice.  They  all  lead,  how- 
ever, to  the  same  result,  the  conviction  that  the  Chinaman 
is  no  worse  than  another  man  would  be  in  his  position,  and 
that  the  position  is  a  necessary  one  in  the  development 
of  society.  The  Chinese  trader  is  to  the  native  consumer 
the  missionary  of  the  modern  economic  organization.  He 
brings  to  the  native  and  presents  to  him  in  concrete  form 
the  advantages  to  be  gained  by  entering  the  organization 
in  producing  for  exchange.  Every  imported  ware  sold  by 
peddler  or  merchant  is  a  pledge  that  a  native  product  of 
equal  value  is  gained  for  export.  The  petty  trader  should 
have  the  credit  for  the  total  amount  produced  for  export 
by  the  individual  natives,  and  for  a  large  proportion  of 
that  which  is  produced  by  natives  under  European  direc- 
tion. The  writer  has  no  information  as  to  the  form  in 
which  wages  are  paid  on  the  plantations  ;  it  is  possible 


366  THE  DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

that  the  truck  system  prevails  to  some  extent,  and  that 
the  laborers  are  forced  to  take  their  pay  in  the  shape  of 
commodities  at  the  proprietor's  store.  So  far  as  they  are 
paid  in  money  and  are  allowed  to  spend  it  without  restric- 
tion, they  find  the  real  incentive  to  labor  in  the  wares 
that  are  offered  them  by  the  trader.  On  the  skill  and 
energy  with  which  he  fulfils  his  functions  production  for 
the  European  market  depends. 

A  modern  writer  ^  finds  two  great  questions  in  the  rela- 
tions between  European  rulers  and  the  people  of  tropical 
dependencies.  The  first  is  that  of  labor,  discussed  above. 
The  second,  hardly  distinguishable  often  from  the  first  and 
always  running  parallel,  is  that  of  land.  The  separation 
of  land  and  labor  comes  at  a  comparatively  late  period  in 
economic  development,  and  has  scarcely  more  than  begun 
in  modern  Java.  It  implies  a  "  market "  both  for  land 
and  for  labor,  freedom  of  movement  on  the  part  of  labor 
and  capital,  ample  and  accurate  information  on  the  side  of 
both  parties  to  the  exchange,  and  such  intelligent  foresight 
that  they  can  be  trusted  to  consult  their  permanent  inter- 
ests in  any  transactions  in  which  they  engage.  These 
conditions  are  lacking  in  Java.  A  government  which 
supposed  them  to  exist  and  introduced  the  principle  that 
the  natives  could  do  as  they  pleased  with  property  rights 
to  the  land  they  occupied,  would  find  itself  involved  in 
difficulties  as  great  as  if  it  upheld  the  right  of  the  natives 
to  sell  their  persons  into  credit  bondage.  Transfers  of 
land  would  not  be  simple  economic  transactions.  With 
the  land  would  go  the  person  of  the  former  proprietor,  not 
merely  as  a  laborer,  but  as  a  political  dependent  of  the  new 

1  Stengel,  "  Die  Arbeiterfrage  in  den  Kolonien,"  Jahrbuch  der  internat. 
Ver.  f.  vergleichende  Rechtwissenschaft,  1898,  4  :  245. 


X  RECENT  ECONOMIC   POLICY  367 

owner,  and  the  state  would  find  its  sovereignty  impaired 
by  the  rise  of  innumerable  landlords  who  would  exercise 
many  of  the  privileges  of  government  without  the  possi- 
bility of  being  held  to  account  for  any  duties.  Tendencies 
in  this  direction  can  be  plainly  seen  in  the  native  organi- 
zation in  the  period  when  it  was  free  from  Dutch  influence, 
and  they  still  exist.  The  Dutch  government  cannot  hope 
to  check  their  operation  inside  the  village,  where  the 
natives  must  be  left  to  themselves;  it  must  seek  merely 
to  prevent  them  from  gaining  such  force  as  to  invade  the 
higher  political  organization. 

The  Dutch  government  is  not  without  experience  of  the 
evils  that  can  result  from  the  transfer  of  rights  to  land. 
In  its  person  as  sovereign  it  has  in  the  past  stimulated 
from  the  top  of  the  organization  the  very  process  which  it 
seeks  now  to  prevent  from  working  up  from  the  bottom. 
The  so-called  "particular"  lands  exist  nowadays  as  the 
result  of  land  sales  by  the  government,  which  have  taken 
place  at  various  times  from  the  period  of  the  East  India 
Company  down  to  about  1830,  but  which  were  especially 
common  during  the  hard  times  at  the  beginning  of  the 
nineteenth  century.  The  conditions  on  which  the  govern- 
ment made  its  sales  varied  in  different  cases  and  were 
often  far  from  clear.  In  some  cases  apparently  the  natives 
on  the  land  were  put  wholly  at  the  mercy  of  their  lords, 
who  could  demand  unlimited  dues  and  services  and  could 
dispose  of  the  native  holdings  as  they  pleased.  The 
government  reserved  to  itself  the  right  to  interfere  for  the 
protection  of  the  cultivators,  but  it  was  not  strong  enough 
to  prevent  serious  abuses  of  their  position  by  the  landlords. 
With  the  improvement  in  the  Dutch  administration  in  the 
nineteenth  century  the  government  has  become  able  to 


368  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

exercise  a  more  efficient  control  over  the  proprietors  of  par- 
ticular lands  ;  it  upholds  certain  rights  of  the  cultivators, 
and  exercises  its  sovereignty  in  the  judicial  administration 
and  in  the  imposition  of  certain  taxes. 

The  proprietor  still  keeps,  however,  a  semi-public  posi- 
tion ;  he  exacts  dues  in  labor  and  in  kind  from  the  natives, 
and,  subject  to  the  approval  of  the  State,  he  appoints  and 
pays  the  head-men  who  exercise  the  most  important  func- 
tions of  communal  government.  The  "  particular  "  lands 
comprise  a  population  of  more  than  one  half  million  na- 
tives, some  of  them  grouped  in  vast  estates  of  75,000  or  even 
175,000  people.  They  are  owned  in  large  part  by  stock 
companies,  by  absentee  landlords,  or  by  Chinese.^  Abuses 
are  inevitable  under  such  conditions,  and  there  have  been 
a  number  of  complaints  directed  especially  against  the 
Chinese  but  involving  European  administrators  as  well.^ 

1  The  following  statistics  are  given  in  the  Kol.  Verslag  for  1898,  Bijl. 
AAA.,  as  regards  the  possessors  of  "  particular  "  lands  :  — 


Number. 

Bouws. 

Inhabitants, 

Stock  Companies 

.       62 

622,071 

692,631 

Europeans 

.     101 

5-57,6.36 

513,092 

Chinese     .... 

.     197 

368,810 

469,937 

Other  Orientals  and  natives 

.       74 

18,907 

43,870 

434         1,568,324         1,619,.530 
For  confirmation  of  the  statement  about  the  political  position  of  the  land- 
lords see  Elout,  Bijdragen,  1851,  160,  178. 

2  The  "  Tjiomas  affair"  of  1886  was  a  conflict  on  one  of  these  estates 
between  natives,  European  agent,  and  government,  which  brought  the 
anomalies  of  the  position  of  the  particular  lands  clearly  before  the  public. 
The  affair  led  to  a  good  deal  of  polemic  writing  from  which  it  is  hard  to 
disengage  the  truth  ;  apparently  in  this  case  the  proprietor  was  not  guilty 
of  the  abuses  charged  against  him,  the  natives  were  inspired  in  large  part 
by  religious  fanaticism,  and  the  government  allowed  itself  unwarrantable 
liberties.  See  the  articles  in  the  Indische  Gids,  1886-1887,  by  Fae.s,  Van 
K[esteren],  and  Sol,  and  the  "  Koloniale  Kroniek"  in  De  Economist,  1886. 
One  conclusion  is  certain,  that  the  particular  lands  are  a  practical  hin- 
drance to  good  government. 


X  RECENT  ECONOMIC  POLICY  369 

There  have  been  various  propositions  for  the  repurchase 
of  these  lands  by  the  State;  but  there  seems  at  present 
little  likelihood  that  the  government  will  seek  to  remedy 
the  evil  in  this  way. 

The  alienation  of  the  particular  lands  is  an  extreme  case, 
of  historical  interest  rather  than  of  present  practical  im- 
portance. The  government  will  never  again  abdicate  its 
powers  as  apparent  necessity  forced  it  to  do  when  these  lands 
were  sold.  Yet  some  concession  it  must  make  to  employers 
of  native  labor  if  it  is  to  give  them  any  control  over  land 
held  by  natives,  and  stimulate  an  efficient  organization  of 
production.  The  history  of  the  measures  that  it  has  taken 
to  solve  the  problem  would  be  a  long  one  if  told  in  all  the 
detail  of  its  chronological  development.  Some  facts  of  that 
history  have  been  touched  on  in  earlier  chapters  when  the 
position  of  private  planters  before  and  during  the  culture 
system  was  under  discussion.  The  question,  however,  be- 
came of  great  importance  only  when  the  government  with- 
drew from  its  position  as  the  one  great  European  planter  in 
Java,  and  the  object  of  the  following  pages  will  be  to  de- 
scribe merely  the  main  results  of  the  development  in  the 
period  since  the  decline  of  the  culture. 

Logically,  the  first  question  which  the  government  has 
had  to  face  has  been  the  question  of  land  laws  according  to 
the  native  ideas.  Who  were  real  owners  of  land  in  the  na- 
tive organization  ?  In  whom  should  the  government  recog- 
nize the  right  of  property,  the  right  to  "  all  those  undefined 
uses  which  remain  over  after  all  the  definite  and  specific 
uses  of  others  have  been  deducted  "  ?  To  these  questions 
the  native  customs  returned  a  somewhat  ambiguous  answer. 
The  cultivators  of  the  soil  had  at  least  in  some  parts  of 
the  island  a  tenure  so  insecure  that  they  appeared  to  be 
2b 


870  THE  DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

laborers  rather  than  proprietors  ;  the  lords  who  were  over 
them  held  their  lands  only  with  their  office  as  a  rule  ;  the 
sovereign  alone  appeared  to  exercise  such  rights  as  are  as- 
sociated with  private  property  in  the  western  world.  The 
Dutch  in  the  period  of  the  Company  were  little  troubled 
by  questions  of  abstract  principle  in  their  relations  with  the 
native  organization,  and  had,  as  has  been  shown,  few  inti- 
mate dealings  with  it,  but  when  Raffles  came  to  introduce 
the  land-tax,  he  had  to  face  the  problem  of  native  tenures. 
He  sought  a  solution  that  might  conveniently  be  applied 
to  the  whole  island,  and  found  it  in  his  statement  that  the 
native  sovereigns  were  sole  proprietors  of  the  land,  and 
that  the  European  government  succeeded  to  their  rights. 
This  solution  has  been  confirmed  by  the  Dutch  government 
which  has  made  official  announcement  that  in  general  it  is 
the  sole  proprietor  of  the  land  and  recognizes  property 
rights  in  others  only  in  the  particular  lands  and  in  the  towns. 
Enough  was  said  in  the  chapter  on  the  native  organiza- 
tion to  show  that  the  princijDle  adopted  did  not  accord 
exactly  with  the  facts  of  the  native  organization.  Raffles 
recognized  departures  from  it  in  some  districts.  It  was  a 
legal  fiction,  much  like  that  which  prevailed  in  England  in 
the  feudal  period.^    The  principle  is  to  be  justified,  not  by 

1  L.  W.  C.  van  den  Berg,  "  Het  eigendomsrecht  van  den  staat  op  den 
grond  op  Java  en  Madoera,"  Bijd.  TLV.,  1891,  5:6:  1-26,  seeks  to  justify 
historically  the  principle  that  the  sovereign  is  proprietor  of  all  the  land 
in  Java  and  Madoera.  The  argument  does  not  convince  me ;  it  seems 
irreconcilable  with  the  facts  of  land  tenure  as  they  are  related  in  Raffles's 
Substance,  and  it  does  not  accord  with  the  theories  of  the  natives,  as  they 
appear  in  the  Eindresum^.  In  Bantam  the  people  regarded  themselves 
as  proprietors  —  but  were  afraid  to  say  so !  The  judicial  adviser  of  the 
Governor  General,  Mr.  G.  D.  Willinck,  published  in  1891  a  pamphlet  ("  De 
Grondrechten  bij  de  volken  van  den  Oost-Indischen  Archipel,"  's  Grav., 
1891)  to  show  that  historically  the  sovereign  could  not  be  regarded  as 
sole  proprietor  of  the  land,  especially  in  the  Outer  Possessions.     He 


X  RECENT  ECONOMIC  POLICY  371 

reference  to  the  earlier  history  of  the  Javanese,  but  by  the 
later  history  of  the  Dutch,  who  have  accepted  the  trust  im- 
posed upon  them  in  assuming  the  position  of  proprietors, 
and  administered  it  faithfully  in  the  interests  of  the  natives. 

Passing  from  this  question,  which  is  largely  one  of 
theory,  the  practical  problem  has  been  the  use  that  the 
government  should  make  of  its  rights,  and  especially  the 
conditions  on  which  it  should  permit  foreigners  access  to 
the  land.  This  problem  can  be  divided  into  two  parts, 
according  as  the  land  is  or  is  not  already  cleared  and  cul- 
tivated by  native  laborers.  Arable  and  waste  appeal  to 
different  classes  of  planters,  and  lead  to  very  different 
relations  between  planters  and  natives. 

The  land  already  cleared  and  settled  presents  the  more 
serious  problem.  This  land,  most  of  which  is  irrigated 
and  devoted  to  rice  culture  by  the  natives,  is  suited  to 
crops  like  sugar,  tobacco,  and  indigo.  The  government 
must  guard  it  with  especial  jealousy  because  it  is  the 
source  of  the  greater  part  of  the  food  supply,  and  because 
it  lends  itself  with  singular  readiness  to  the  exploitation 
of  shrewd  capitalists,  whether  they  be  Orientals  or  Euro- 
peans. Land  and  labor  go  together,  and  both  are  so  tied 
up  in  the  native  political  organization  that  the  man  who 
captures  that  can  abuse  its  resources  much  as  he  pleases. 
This  applies  with  especial  force  to  the  villages  in  the 
richest  parts  of  the  island,  where  the  land  is  held  on  a 
communal  tenure.^ 

thought,  however,  that  the  government  had  exercised  proprietary  rights 
80  long  in  Java  that  there  vpas  no  use  in  returning  now  to  old  customs. 
It  would  be  possible  to  extend  greatly  the  discussion  and  references  on 
this  point,  which  has  been  long  debated  in  the  Netherlands,  but  for  present 
purposes  it  seems  unnecessary. 

1  According  to  the  statistics  in  "  Jaarcijfers,  Kolonien,"  1897  (pub. 


372  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

Though  the  government  has  taken  to  itself  the  property 
right  in  land,  it  has  left  the  natives  in  hereditary  posses- 
sion, and  it  has  interfered  but  slightly  with  the  customs 
of  native  tenure.  These  customs,  to  judge  from  the 
native  evidence  collected  in  the  report  of  a  government 
investigation,  are  the  product  of  local  growth,  but  slightly 
modified  by  external  influences  like  Islam.  The  Dutch 
government  has  exercised  an  important  influence  only 
in  stimulating  the  extension  of  communal  tenure,  and 
effected  that  unconsciously  by  its  flscal  demands  in  the 
past.  The  restrictions  that  it  imposes  on  the  clearing  of 
fresh  land  by  natives  are  generally  disregarded ;  the  con- 
version from  communal  to  individual  tenure  which  it  has 
invited  proceeds  very  slowly ;  and  the  opportunity  that 
it  offers  the  natives  of  an  approach  to  Western  principles 
in  acquiring  so-called  "  agrarian  property "  has  evoked 
little  interest.^ 

The  one  restriction  which  the  government  has  upheld 
with  severity  and  with  success  has  touched  the  periphery 
of  the  native  organization,  as  it  were,  rather  than  its 
centre.  This  restriction  applies  to  the  relations  between 
natives  and  non-natives,  whether  Europeans  or  foreign 
Orientals.  According  to  a  formula  which  has  been  framed 
to  describe  the  policy  of  the  Dutch,  the  native  is  major  in 

1899),  p.  34,  the  total  number  of  villages  in  Java  and  Madoera  (including 
some  of  peculiar  constitution),  was  29,968;  6573  had  only  individual 
tenure,  10,213  had  only  communal,  12,949  had  a  mixture  of  the  two.  It 
is  with  reluctance  that  I  refrain  from  describing  in  detail  the  communal 
institutions,  and  discussing  their  origin  and  present  significance,  but  it 
seems  wiser  not  to  attempt  in  this  book  a  subject  which  should  form  a 
study  by  itself. 

1  For  a  brief  description  and  criticism  of  agrarian  property,  see  Anton, 
NAHJ.,  Schmollers  Jahrbuch,  1899,  23 :  1349.  The  institution  has  not 
been  of  sufficient  importance  to  warrant  an  extended  treatment  of  it  here. 


X  RECENT   ECONOMIC   POLICY  373 

his  relations  to  other  natives ;  he  is  a  minor  in  his  rela- 
tions to  the  rest  of  the  world. ^ 

With  respect  to  the  permanent  transfer  of  rights  from 
natives  to  non-natives  the  prohibition  is  absolute  ;  there 
can  be  no  valid  sale  to  a  forfeign  Oriental  or  to  a  Euro- 
pean. Foreigners  can  own  building  lots  in  the  towns, 
and  can  acquire  such  parts  of  the  "  particular  "  lands  as 
the  present  proprietors  may  desire  to  sell  to  them,  but 
they  cannot  hope  for  more.  It  is  impossible  to  say  how 
serious  the  evils  would  be  if  this  prohibition  were  re- 
moved. It  is  a  measure  of  security  based  on  past  expe- 
rience with  native  weakness,  and  on  the  conviction  that 
the  native  is  not  yet  ready  to  hold  his  own  in  bargaining 
with  Chinese  or  Europeans.^  The  planters  of  these  for- 
eign nationalities  are,  of  course,  eager  that  the  prohibition 
should  be  removed,  but  so  far  as  is  known  to  the  writer 
there  is  no  likelihood  that  this  step  will  be  taken.  No 
better  endorsement  of  the  present  policy  could  be  had 
than  that  given  by  conditions  in  British  India,  and  by  the 
statement  of  a  traveller  from  there,  who  thought  that  the 
Javanese  owe  their  prosperity  as  much  to  the  wise  pro- 

^  Chailley-Bert,  "Les  Hollandais  k  Java,"  Cosmopolis,  May,  1898, 
10  :  421.  I  do  not  find  in  the  book,  "Java  et  ses  habitants,"  this  sentence 
or  the  accompanying  appreciation  of  the  land  system  as  a  "  chef-d'ceuvre 
ou  Ton  trouve  dosses  h  souhait  la  liberty  et  1' intervention." 

2  When  the  investigation  of  1868  was  made,  there  was  great  difference 
of  opinion  among  oificials  as  to  the  probable  results  if  natives  were  al- 
lowed to  sell  their  lands  to  foreigners.  Many  oflBcials  thought  that  after 
a  few  years,  perhaps  a  generation,  the  natives  could  be  trusted  to  look 
after  their  own  interests.  See  Eindr.,  2,  the  last  paragraphs  of  the  sepa- 
rate residency  reports.  These  views  would  now,  I  think,  be  called  too 
optimistic.  Eor  evidence  to  show  that  the  Javanese  would  fall  a  prey  if 
allowed  free  sale  of  land,  see  Neberburgh,  "  De  onmondigheid  van  den 
Javaan  ten  aanzien  van  het  grondbezit,"  TNI.,  1878,  7  :  1  :  26  ff. ;  Gelpke, 
"  Landbezit,"  De  Gids,  1877,  1  :  76. 


374  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

tection  of  the  government  as  to  the  fertility  of  the  island. 
"It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  the  loss  of  all  the  many 
benefits  which  undoubtedly  would  have  been  conferred  on 
Java  by  the  substitution  of  English  for  Dutch  rule  is  not 
too  high  a  price  to  have  paid  for  escape  from  the  many 
evils  of  unrestrained  power  to  alienate  landed  property."  ^ 

The  only  hold  that  foreigners  can  get  on  land  cultivated 
by  natives  is  a  lease,  fixed  at  a  short  term  and  hedged 
around  with  restrictions.  Legislation  supplementing  the 
agrarian  law  of  1870  allowed  the  lease  of  native  arable  to 
persons  or  corporations  of  Dutch  citizenship,  or  resident 
in  the  Netherlands  or  in  Dutch  India,  for  a  term  of  five 
years,  or,  in  the  case  of  land  held  on  the  tenure  of  "  agra- 
rian property,"  for  twenty  years.  Every  contract  must 
be  made  with  individuals,  even  when  the  land  was  held 
on  a  communal  tenure,  and  the  insertion  of  clauses  in  the 
contract  providing  for  a  renewal  of  the  lease  at  the  end 
of  the  period  was  prohibited.  Advances  on  the  rental 
could  be  made  only  to  an  amount  covering  one  year,  and 
every  contract  must  be  registered  by  officials  of  the  pro- 
vincial government  to  become  valid. 

Restrictions  such  as  these  would  seem  to  assure  the 
native  against  abuses,  but  experience  proved  that  the  law 
had  gone  too  far,  and  really  furthered  the  evils  that  it  was 
designed  to  prevent.     Planters  who  desired  for  the  sugar 

1  Boys,  Java,  56.  Colquhoun,  "Russia  against  India,"  1900,  p.  133, 
says  that  from  10%  to  25%  of  the  land  of  the  Punjab  has  been  taken  by 
usurers  since  the  Mutiny.  An  item  in  the  New  York  Post,  Nov.  6,  1900, 
stated  that  a  Punjab  Land  Alienation  Bill  had  recently  been  enacted,  pro- 
viding that  permanent  alienation  of  the  land  should  take  place  only  among 
the  members  of  the  agricultural  tribes,  while  temporary  alienations  and 
leases  were  limited  to  a  period  of  twenty  years.  This  legislation  followed 
substantially  the  line  of  the  Dutch. 


X  RECENT  ECONOMIC  POLICE'  375 

culture  the  ricli  land  of  the  villages  with  communal  ten- 
ure could  not  be  held  to  innumerable  contracts  with 
individuals  holding  each  an  acre  or  less,  and  exercised 
all  kinds  of  improper  devices  to  secure  the  land  they 
wanted  from  the  village  governments.  Subleases  and 
other  irregular  arrangements  nullified  the  intent  of  parts 
of  the  law,  and  the  provision  for  the  public  registration 
of  contracts  became  almost  a  dead  letter.  The  govern- 
ment was  forced  to  recognize  that  it  had  exceeded  its 
power  of  practical  control,  and  amended  its  legislation  to 
the  advantage  of  the  foreign  planters.  Lands  held  on  an 
individual  tenure  can  now  be  leased  for  a  term  extended 
to  twelve  years,  and  communal  lands  can  be  leased  in 
block  by  a  vote  of  two-thirds  of  the  village  community 
under  strict  public  supervision,  though  still  only  for  the 
former  period  of  five  years.  Not  more  than  one-third  of 
the  irrigated  fields  of  a  village  can  be  leased  at  any  time. 
So  far  as  shown  by  official  reports  and  statistics,  the  gov- 
ernment has  secured  its  object  of  a  more  efficient  protec- 
tion of  the  natives  by  these  measures ;  undertakings  which 
formerly  concealed  their  operation  from  public  authority 
have  been  induced  to  register  and  so  subject  themselves 
to  control.!  The  government  has  extended  its  paternal 
care  even  beyond  this  general  legislation  in  the  case  of 
certain  crops;  the  establishment  of  undertakings  for  the 

1  The  number  of  contracts  offered  for  registration  increased  very  largely, 
and  the  government  found  no  objection  to  most  of  them.  Contracts  were 
refused  registration  for  various  reasons  ;  some  concealed  a  loan  on  grovf- 
ing  crops  under  the  form  of  a  lease  contract ;  some  exceeded  the  one-third 
limit.  The  judgment  of  officials  was  "  on  the  whole  favorable  "  ;  difficul- 
ties were  experienced  only  in  a  few  districts,  and  a  local  investigation 
was  ordered  to  determine  how  these  should  be  met.  Kol,  Verslag,  1898, 
pp.  65-66. 


376  THE   DUTCH   IN  JAVA  chap. 

manufacture  of  sugar  and  indigo  requires  the  special  per- 
mission of  the  Governor  General,  which  can  he  refused 
altogether  or  granted  under  such  restrictions  as  appear  to 
safeguard  the  interests  of  the  natives. ^ 

An  exception  to  the  regular  system  in  the  leasing  of 
native  land  appears  in  the  two  principalities  of  Soera- 
karta  and  Djokjokarta,  where  the  Dutch  government 
rules  not  directly  but  through  a  protectorate. 2  In  those 
districts  the  old  native  institution  still  persists  of  main- 
taining the  administration  not  by  money  salaries,  but  by 
grants  of  the  public  income  from  land.  From  early  times 
the  grantees  have  found  it  to  their  advantage  to  farm  out 
their  rights  to  European  planters,  who  use  the  control 
thus  given  them  over  native  land  and  labor  to  cultivate 
export  products.  By  a  native  custom  that  has  become 
pretty  general  in  the  principalities  the  old  theory  of  Van 
den  Bosch  is  roughly  realized  ;  two-fifths  of  the  land  are 
set  apart  for  the  use  of  the  holder  of  the  "  appanage  "  or 
his  representative,  the  European  farmer.  Two-fifths  are 
reserved  for  the  personal  needs  of  the  natives,  and  the 
remaining  one-fifth  is  devoted  to  the  service  of  the  hekel, 
the  village  head.     The  farmer  disposes  of  such  labor  dues 

1  So  in  1898  petitions  for  the  establishment  of  sugar  factories  were 
granted  only  on  conditions  affecting  the  use  of  water  or  the  location  of  the 
lands  leased  ;  one  petition  was  denied  altogether  because  the  food  supply 
was  not  sufficient  in  the  district  iu  question  ;  the  petitioner  might  neither 
lease  land  nor  buy  cane  of  the  natives.  Kol.  Verslag,  1898,  Bijl.  WW., 
p.  10. 

2  This  system  is  briefly  described  in  Jenks,  Report,  pp.  63-64.  No 
statement  about  the  system  can  be  at  the  same  time  general  and  accurate, 
for  practices  differ  widely  even  in  the  two  principalities.  I  have  sought  to 
suggest  only  the  characteristic  features  ;  for  details  the  reader  is  referred 
to  Eindr.,  3,  Bijl.  B  and  C,  and  to  articles  by  Van  Alphen,  Ind.  Gids, 
1882,  2  :  279  ff. ;  1893,  2  :  1881  ff. 


I  RECENT  ECONOMIC  POLICY  377 

as  are  fixed  by  local  custom,  and  provides  for  what  fur- 
ther needs  he  may  have  by  the  hiring  of  wage  labor. 

Though  in  form  the  farmer  is  denied  all  political  power 
over  the  subject  cultivators,  this  arrangement  is  evidently 
subject  to  .abuses  that  the  Dutch  have  long  had  to  fight 
in  the  land  over  which  they  have  exercised  direct  control. 
It  is  allowed  now  to  continue  only  because  of  the  peculiar 
political  situation  of  the  principalities,  and  it  is  carefully 
restricted  in  its  operations.  Foreign  Orientals  are  denied 
the  privilege  of  farming,  and  Europeans  are  granted  it 
only  on  the  written  permission  of  the  Governor  General, 
revocable  at  any  time.  Contracts  can  be  made  for  a  term 
of  thirty  years  ;  every  contract  is  carefully  investigated 
by  a  government  official,  and  must  apply  to  land  at  least 
three  hundred  and  fifty  acres  in  extent,  this  last  provision 
being  designed  apparently  to  enable  the  government  to 
exercise  more  efficient  supervision.  Opinions  differ  as  to 
the  effect  of  this  system  on  the  cultivators  subject  to  it. 
There  seems  no  question  that  the  people  are  in  general 
worse  off  in  the  principalities  than  in  the  government 
lands  of  Java,  but  this  may  well  be  a  result  of  the  differ- 
ence in  general  historical  development  and  have  nothing 
to  do  with  the  question  of  European  leases.  Testimony 
is  not  lacking,  on  the  other  hand,  that  the  natives  fare 
better  under  European  farmers  than  under  any  of  the 
native  systems  to  which  they  are  subject. ^ 

It  was  remarked,  near  the  beginning  of  this  description 
of  the  modern  land  system,  that  the  government  has 
found  it  advisable  to  modify  its  policy  according  as  the 

1  Report  of  Spaan,  1875,  Eindr.,  3,  Bijl  B.,  p.  36  ;  A[lphpn],  "De  ex- 
ploitatie  van  gronden  en  bevolking  in  de  kedjawen-desas  der  Vorsten- 
landen,"  Ind.  Gids,  1893,  2  :  1889. 


378  THE  DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chaf. 

land  is  or  is  not  already  occupied  by  native  cultivators. 
There  remains  now  to  be  described  the  policy  adopted 
with  regard  to  uncleared  land,  the  waste  as  it  may  con- 
veniently be  termed. 

This  land,  which  is  utilized  especially  for  the  produc- 
tion of  coffee,  tea,  and  cocoa,  may  be  acquired  on  much 
more  liberal  terms  than  the  native  arable.  The  planter 
who  does  the  work  of  bringing  it  under  cultivation 
may  fairly  ask  for  a  term  of  use  long  enough  to  repay 
him  for  his  original  outlay.  He  must  build  up  an  organ- 
ization by  bringing  laborers  to  the  land,  instead  of  rely- 
ing upon  a  union  of  the  two  factors  of  production  effected 
by  the  natives  themselves,  and  there  is  not  the  same 
opportunity  for  an  abuse  of  the  native  resources. 

These  considerations  were  recognized  in  the  legislation 
from  1856  on,  by  which  a  lease  of  waste  land  could  be  ob- 
tained for  a  term  of  twenty  years,  and  for  the  payment  of  a 
rental  fixed  by  competition,  but  in  practice  much  less  than 
that  paid  for  cleared  land.  By  1870  forty  thousand  houws 
(about  seventy  thousand  acres)  had  been  leased  on  these 
terms,  at  the  rate  of  about  six  gulden  a  houw.  Further  con- 
cessions were  made  in  the  agrarian  law  of  that  year,  and 
leases  on  the  old  terms  have  practically  disappeared.  By  the 
present  regulations  waste  land  can  be  secured  by  planters 
on  an  emphyteutic  tenure  (erf-pacM) ,  for  a  term  of 
seventy-five  years,  and  for  the  payment  of  a  quit-rent 
ranging  from  a  maximum  of  five  gulden  per  houw  to  one 
gulden  or  even  less.^     The  planter  has  no  assurance  that 

1  In  exceptional  cases  the  state  gets  more  than  the  normal  maximum 
of  five  gulden,  Jenks  quotes  reasons  for  establishing  a  uniform  low  rate  ; 
Report,  112.  I  omit  a  great  amount  of  administrative  detail,  for  vyhich, 
see  the  sources  cited  at  the  head  of  the  chapter.     The  maximum  area  of 


X  RECENT  ECONOMIC  POLICY  879 

his  lease  will  be  renewed  at  the  end  of  its  term,  or  that  he 
will  receive  compensation  for  permanent  improvements 
that  he  has  made.  This  last  consideration  is  not,  how- 
ever, of  great  importance  in  a  tropical  country  like  Java, 
and  the  advantages  of  the  tenure  so  far  outweigh  its  dis- 
advantages that  the  area  of  land  held  on  emphyteusis  has 
increased  constantly  and  now  forms  no  inconsiderable 
portion  of  the  total  cultivated  area  of  the  island. ^ 

Planters  have  not  ceased  to  complain  of  the  strictness 
with  which  the  government  regulates  their  relations  with 
the  native  laborers  and  landholders.  This  proves  noth- 
ing ;  if  they  did  not  complain,  we  could  be  sure  that  they 
were  having  things  too  much  their  own  way.  It  is  im- 
possible for  the  government  to  protect  the  natives  as  is 
necessary  from  the  political  point  of  view  without  sub- 
jecting itself  to  criticism  from  the  economic  standpoint. 
Government  officials  hold  planters  in  a  position  of  ex- 
treme dependence,  and  may  sometimes  abuse  their  author- 
ity.^  Yet  this  course  seems  justified  by  the  fact  that  on 
one  side  the  native  has  been  well  protected,  and  on  the 

the  concession  is  about  five  hundred  bouws,  and  the  privileges  are  re- 
stricted to  the  same  persons  as  enjoy  the  right  to  lease  land  of  natives. 

1  In  1897  the  area  held  on  lease  from  the  government  was  502,931 
houws;  on  lease  from  natives,  132,297  houws.  The  total  amount  of  land 
cleared  for  cultivation  by  the  natives  was  3,819,513  boiiws.  Jaarcijfers, 
1897,  53,  50.  Land  leased  from  the  government  was  used  as  follows: 
Coffee,  443  undertakings ;  cinchona,  83 ;  tea,  68  ;  cocoa,  59  ;  sugar,  24  ; 
tobacco,  7  ;  other,  06  ;  363  undertakings  were  held  by  companies,  366  by 
individual  Europeans,  45  by  Chinese,  6  by  natives.  Kol.  Verslag,  1898, 
Bijl.  ZZ. 

2  Cf.  Worsfold,  "A  Visit  to  Java,"  Lond.,  1893,  172,  180;  Chailley- 
Bert,  JH.,  166,  212.  In  Ind.  Gids,  1899,  2  :  845  ff.,  a  circular  is  printed 
which  was  issued  by  a  resident  in  Borneo,  reproving  his  subordinates  for 
checking  the  freedom  of  individual  undertakers.  The  conditions  which  it 
suggests  must  still  exist  in  Java.  Cf.  Van  Kestereu  in  Ind.  Gids,  1885, 
1 :  683  ff. 


380 


THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA 


other  production  has  steadily  and  rapidly  increased.  The 
following  table  presents  a  summary  of  the  advance,  meas- 
ured by  the  growth  of  imports  and  exports  :  ^  — 

[Figures  in  Gulden,  000  omitted.] 


Imports 

Exports 

Total 

1825   . 

14,317 

17,889 

32,206 

1835   . 

21,962 

34,997 

56,959 

1845   . 

37,221 

68,083 

105,304 

1855   . 

47,981 

84,127 

132,108 

1865   . 

61,614 

115,017 

176,661 

1875   . 

125,672 

177,076 

302,748 

1876-1880 

148,746 

192,878 

341,624 

1881-1885 

154,066 

190,867 

344,534 

1886-1890 

145,241 

186,338 

331,579 

1891-1895 

172,484 

211,345 

383,828 

1900   . 

195,924 

259,034 

454,958 

Statistics  of  this  kind  present  of  course  no  absolute  proof 
of  a  growth  of  welfare.  Welfare  in  the  European  sense 
hardly  exists  in  Java  now.  The  people  prefer  to  increase 
in  number  rather  than  to  raise  their  standard  of  life  as  in- 
dividuals. They  seem,  however,  in  spite  of  a  great  growth 
of  population,  to  have  at  least  maintained  the  customary 
standard. 2     Articles  describing  the   private  economy   of 

1  This  is  made  up  from  the  figures  given  by  N.  P.  van  den  Berg  in  Enc, 
NL,  3:544-545.  The  figures  for  1825  to  1865  inclusive,  taken  from 
G.  F.  de  Bruyn  Kops,  include  only  the  trade  of  Java  and  Madoera ;  later 
figures  apply  to  all  of  Dutch  India.  Figures  in  the  Jaarcijfers,  p.  65, 
show  that  in  recent  years  the  trade  of  the  Outer  Possessions  has  been 
rather  less  than  half  that  of  Java  and  Madoera.  Expressed  in  quantities 
instead  of  in  values,  the  growth  of  trade  would  be  considerably  greater. 

2  The  article  by  C.  E.  van  Kesteren,  "  Een  en  ander  over  de  welvaart 
der  inlandsche  bevolking  en  de  toekomst  der  Europeesche  landbouwnijver- 
heid  in  Ned.  Ind.,"  Ind.  Gids,  1885,  1  :  551-619,  does  not  convince  me  ;  he 
seeks  to  prove  statistically  a  decline  in  welfare  since  1880.  I  have  seen 
no  later  articles  seeking  to  maintain  the  same  point. 


X  RECENT  ECONOMIC   POLICY  381 

the  Javanese  show  that  they  have  a  pitifully  small  mar- 
gin above  the  mere  necessaries  of  life.^  Oriental  and 
European  standards  are  vastly  different,  hovv^ever  ;  meas- 
ured by  the  Oriental  standard,  or  measured  by  their  own 
past  history,  the  Javanese  are  now  comparatively  well-to- 
do.2 

1  Cf.  J.  H.  F.  Sollewiju  Gelpke,  "  Het  budget  van  een  Javaansche  boer," 
Ind.  Gids,  1880,  2:563  ff. ;  ui,  "  De  middelen  welke  de  inlander  beeft 
om  de  landrente  te  voldoen,"  ib.,  188(3,  1 :  420  ff.,  575  ff.  ;  "  Arminius," 
"Het  budget  van  een  Javaan.schen  landbouwer,"  ib.,  1889,  2:  1685  ff., 
1885  ff.,  2149  ff. ;  and  tbe  articles  cited  above  under  labor. 

2  See  Leclerq,  "Java,"  Rev.  des  deux  Mondes,  Nov.  1897,  144:  186, 
for  the  impression  made  on  a  European  traveller ;  he  found  the  people 
well  fed,  properly  clad,  and  much  better  off  than  the  people  of  Ceylon. 


CHAPTER   XI 

RECENT  FISCAL  POLICY 

nnHE  transition  to  the  modern  system  of  production  in 
-*-  Java  has  involved  necessarily  the  revision  of  the  gov- 
ernment's fiscal  system,  and  has  been  accompanied  by 
many  fiscal  reforms.  The  culture  system  was,  however,  too 
powerful  an  institution  to  disappear  completely  and  at 
once  from  the  field  either  of  production  or  of  finance  ; 
the  strongest  parts  of  it  were  maintained  for  some  time 
for  the  revenue  that  they  produced,  and  the  spirit  of  it 
modified  in  important  points  the  form  of  succeeding  legis- 
lation. The  most  significant  principle  in  the  Dutch  Indian 
fiscal  system,  the  relation  established  between  the  finances 
of  the  home  country  and  the  dependency,  still  remains 
substantially  as  it  was  established  in  the  period  of  the 
culture  system,  though  robbed  now  of  its  practical 
importance. 

The  liberal  party  of  the  reform  period,  however  radical 
it  seemed  to  its  opponents  at  the  time,  shrank  from  a 
complete  breach  with  the  past  colonial  policy,  and  had 
no  thought  of  surrendering  all  the  advantage  which  the 
Netherlands  had  enjoyed  from  the  profits  of  rule  in  the 
East.  Multatuli  said,  with  characteristic  sarcasm,  that 
there  were  in  the  Netherlands  two  parties  "  with  very 
different  principles  "  :    the  conservatives,  who  wanted  to 

382 


CHAP.  XI  RECENT  FISCAL  POLICY  383 

get  from  the  Indies  all  the  profit  possible,  and  the  liberals, 
who  wanted  to  get  all  the  profit  possible  from  the  Indies.^ 

The  reform  party  stood  for  a  just  government,  free 
from  abuse  of  the  natives  and  from  the  exclusion  of  Euro- 
peans, but  it  believed  in  making  as  large  a  surplus  for 
the  home  treasury  as  was  consistent  with  "the  essential 
and  permanent  interest  of  the  colonies,"  and  held  an 
exaggerated  idea  of  the  profit  that  might  be  gained  by 
a  purer  system  of  taxation. ^ 

The  so-called  Comptahiliteitswet  of  1864  provided  that 
thereafter  the  budget  of  Dutch  India  should  be  fixed  by 
a  law  of  the  home  government  ;  it  had  important  political 
consequences  in  restricting  the  power  of  the  Governor 
General,  and  in  stimulating  interference  on  the  part  of 
the  Dutch  parliament,  but  it  led  to  no  change  in  the  "  net- 
profit  system,"  by  which  the  Dutch  received  the  annual 
surplus  from  their  dependencies.  The  Indies  continued 
to  contribute  sums  ranging  between  10,000,000  and 
40,000,000  gulden  a  year.3 

The  system  by  which  the  balance  of  the  Dutch  budget 
was  made  dependent  on  a  contribution  which  came  from 
a  distant  dependency  and  which  varied  immensely  from 
year  to  year  seemed  to  some  not  only  unjust  to  India 
but  injurious  also  to  the  Netherlands.  De  Waal,  minister 
of  the  colonies  in  1869,  proposed  that  in  the  budget  for^ 
the  next  year  a  sum  of  10,000,000  gulden  should  be  set 

^  Quoted  by  Keymeulen,  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes,  1892,  2  :  805. 

2  See  the  summary  of  the  liberal  position  by  Brouwer,  "Kol.  kamer- 
kout,"  De  Gids,  1863,  1  :  262,  and  for  a  view  of  the  profit  to  be  made  by  a 
change,  Bosch,  TNI.,  1862,  24  :  2  :  277. 

3  See  the  table  of  Dutch  revenues,  1849  to  1890,  by  Boissevain,  "Die 
neueste  Stenerreform  in  den  Niederlanden,"  Schanz's  Finanz-Archiv, 
1894,  11  :  692. 


384  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

as  the  contribution  from  the  Indies  ;  he  planned  to  revise 
this  amount  in  later  years  to  make  it  a  fair  equivalent  for 
the  expenditures  on  colonial  account  of  the  home  govern- 
ment, and  proposed  to  appropriate  all  surplus  above  this 
fixed  contribution  to  the  benefit  of  the  dependency.  His 
project  was  rejected  by  the  Second  Chamber.  The  out- 
break of  the  war  with  Atjeh  in  1873  changed  the  practical 
bearings  of  the  question,  by  causing  such  an  increase  in 
the  expenditures  in  the  Indies  that  the  surplus  dwindled, 
and  in  1878  vanished  entirely.  Since  that  date  there  have 
been  occasional  years  in  which  the  Indian  finances  showed 
a  surplus,  but  the  tendency  in  general  has  been  in  the 
opposite  direction,  and  even  in  the  exceptional  years  the 
home  government  has  taken  no  tribute  from  its  depend- 
ency. On  the  other  hand  it  has  been  forced  to  assist  the 
Indian  treasury  by  advances  and  by  the  negotiation  of 
loans,  always,  however,  at  the  charge  of  the  dependency. 
Though  the  question  of  policy  involved  in  the  "net- 
profit  system  "  has  lost  its  practical  importance  since  the 
Indian  dependencies  have  ceased  to  return  a  surplus,  it 
has  continued  to  be  a  subject  of  discussion  in  the  Nether- 
lands, and  a  number  of  attempts  have  been  made  to  revise 
the  relations  between  the  Indian  and  the  Dutch  treas- 
uries. All  schemes  have  had  in  common  the  idea  that 
the  Indies  should  be  held  to  contribute  each  year  a  fixed 
sum  which  should  recompense  the  home  government  fur 
its  expenditures  on  colonial  account,  while  any  surplus 
above  that  should  be  appropriated  by  the  States  General 
to  objects  of  direct  interest  to  the  people  in  the  East. 
The  amount  of  the  annual  contribution  has  varied  in  the 
different  projects  from  2,000,000  to  6,000,000  gulden. 
It  has  been  proved  impossible  to  reach  an  agreement  on 


XI  RECENT  FISCAL  POLICY  385 

the  amount  which  might  properly  be  imposed,  for  the 
Indies  bear  now  all  expenses  which  can  be  directly 
charged  to  them,  and  this  further  contribution  repre- 
sents the  payment  for  institutions  which  the  Dutch 
would  have  to  support  in  any  event,  but  which  are  sup- 
posed to  be  of  interest  also  to  the  dependencies,  —  such  as 
the  army  and  navy  at  home,  the  diplomatic  and  consular 
services,  the  system  of  higher  education  in  the  Nether- 
lands, and  the  Dutch  States  General.^  As  the  question 
has  been  purely  one  of  theory,  it  has  been  easy  to  find 
objections  to  every  plan  proposed,  and  none  has  gained 
enough  support  to  enable  it  to  become  law.  In  recent 
years  the  problem  has  been  complicated  by  the  growth 
of  a  sentiment  in  complete  reaction  against  the  old  colo- 
nial policy,  charging  the  Dutch  government  with  having 
robbed  the  Indies  of  their  millions  in  the  past,  and  de- 
manding a  restitution  of  the  surplus  that  has  been  taken 
since  the  Comptabiliteitswet  went  into  operation  in  1867. ^ 
As  a  result  of  this  conflict  of  opinions  the  matter  still 
remains  unsettled,  and  the  budget  of  the  Netherlands 
still  shows  each  year  among  the  revenues  an  item  "  Con- 
tribution of  Dutch  India  to  the  revenues  for  the  payment 
of  the  kingdom's  expenditures,"  against  which  no  sum  is 
set.^ 

Allusion  was  made  above  to  the  Atjeh  war  which  began 

1  Van  Soest,  "  De  kwestie  der  Indische  bijdrage,"  TNI.,  1879,  8:1:  234. 
For  further  details,  see  this  article,  "De  vaste  bijdrage,"  TNI.,  1880, 
9:2:  455  ff.,  and  H.  J.  Bool,  "  De  financieele  verhouding  tusschen  Neder- 
land  en  ludie,"  Ind.  Gids,  1892,  2:  1815  ff.,  1893,  1  :  213  ff. 

2  This  view,  which  was  first  brought  up  in  the  States  General  in  1888, 
by  Nieuwenhuis,  the  Socialist  leader,  is  defended  by  C.  T.  Deventer,  "Een 
eereschuld,"  De  Gids,  1899,  3  :  205  ff. 

3  Staatsbegrootiug,  1900,  "  Wet  op  de  middelen,  Raming  voor  1900," 
letter  0. 

2c 


386 


THE  DUTCH  IN  JAVA 


CHAP. 


in  1873  and  has  continued  to  the  present  time.  This  war 
has  caused  an  expenditure  of  hundreds  of  million  of  gul- 
den, taken  from  the  general  treasury  of  the  Dutch  East 
Indies,  and  hence  paid  mainly  from  the  revenues  of  Java.^ 
As  the  field  of  operations,  however,  lies  in  Sumatra,  a 
narrative  of  the  war  or  discussion  of  the  points  of  policy 
involved  in  it  lies  outside  the  scope  of  this  book,  and  this 
mere  mention  of  it  must  suffice  in  taking  up  the  next 
topic,  the  development  of  Dutch  policy  as  shown  in  the 
expenditures  in  the  East  during  the  last  generation. 
Considerations  of  space  and  of  available  material  impose 
a  summary  treatment  of  this  topic,  which  can  best  be 
illustrated  for  present  purposes  by  comparing  the  budgets 
of  1870  and  1900.2 


EXPENDITURES  OF   THE   DUTCH  EAST  INDIES, 
IN  THE  INDIES 

[Figures  in  Gulden,  000  omitted.] 


1870 

1900 

I. 

Superior  government  . 

749 

1,108 

II. 

Justice 

3,121 

5,330 

III. 

Finance       

4,345 

12,824 

IV. 

Internal  administration 

40,445 

29,558 

V. 

Education,  religion,  and  industry 

6,919 

16,625 

VI. 

Public  works       .... 

7,318 

21,889 

VII. 

War 

18,320 

25,254 

VIII. 

Navy 

Total        .... 

5,199 

4,574 

86,420 

117,162 

1  An  estimate  in  Ind.  Gids,  1893,  2  :  1897,  puts  the  Atjeh  expenditures 
at  200,000,000  gulden.  Recent  press  despatches  announce  that  the  war 
is  now  practically  over. 

2  No  pretensions  to  exactness  can  be  made,  of  course,  in  comparing 
individual  budgets,  but  this  is  of  small   importance  in  view  of  another 


XI  RECENT  FISCAL   POLICY  387 

In  some  of  the  departments  of  expenditure  the  increase 
in  the  items  represents  a  normal  development  of  govern- 
ment activity,  keeping  pace  with  the  increase  of  the  popu- 
lation and  the  growth  of  subject  territory.     Other  items, 
however,  show  differences  so  striking  as  to  call  for  special 
explanation.     The  great  fall  in  expenditures  in  Depart- 
ment  IV,   internal    administration,    seems    to   denote    a 
saving  in  the  most  important  branch  of  government,  the 
provincial  civil  service,  which  would  be  a  complete  depar- 
ture  from   the  ideals  of  the  reformers  who  secured  the 
abolition   of  the  culture  system.     In  fact,  however,  the 
truth   is   the    reverse   of   this.     In   this   department   are 
included  the  expenses  of  the  forced  cultures,  which  in- 
cluded both  coffee  and  sugar  in  1870,  and  which  cost  at 
that   time   about  25,000,000  gulden,  five-eighths   of   the 
total  expenditure  of  the  department.      The   government 
coffee    culture   in   1900   still    demanded    over   5,000,000 
gulden,   but   this   sum   formed   in   the   budget    of    that 
year  little  over  one-fifth  of  the  expenditures  on  internal 
administration,   and  left   for  purposes  really  directed  to 
the  welfare   of   the   natives  a  greatly  increased  amount. 
The  natives  have  gained  in  the  same  way,  though  to  a 
less  degree,  by  the  growth  of  the  expenditures  in  Depart- 
ment III,  finance,  which  represents  the  extensiop  of  the 
tax  system  in  place  of  the  cultures  of  the  earlier  period. 

element  of  uncertainty,  the  fact  that  expenditures  in  Java  and  in  the 
other  islands  are  not  separated  in  the  budget  statements.  As  I  seek  to 
give  only  a  general  view  of  the  development  I  have  not  complicated  the 
table  by  adding  to  it  colonial  expenditures  in  the  Netherlands,  amounting 
in  each  period  to  about  one-fifth  of  the  totals  here  given.  The  statement 
for  1870  is  taken  from  De  Economist,  1870,  1  : 2-32  ;  that  for  1900  from 
the  official  "Begrooting  van  Nederlandsch  Indie,"  No.  22.  See  "  Jaarcij- 
fers,  Kolonien,"  for  further  details. 


388  THE    DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

The  most  significant  changes  are  those  which  appear  in 
Departments  V  and  VI  ;  they  are  striking  enough  if  the 
figures  for  1870  and  1900  are  compared,  but  if  the  figures 
of  1810  are  taken  for  a  starting-point  the  changes  amount 
to  nothing  less  than  a  revolution.  The  Dutch  Indian 
government  had  in  1870  broken  with  the  policy  that  made 
revenue  and  power  the  only  objects  of  the  State,  and  had 
made  some  steps  in  furthering  the  civilization  of  its  sub- 
jects, but  in  a  decade  since  that  time  it  has  moved  faster 
and  accomplished  more  than  in  generations  together  before. 

The  items  which  appear  under  the  head  of  public  works 
comprise  the  cost  of  the  construction  and  maintenance  of 
the  state  railways  (making  up  nearly  half  of  the  total), 
and  expenditures  on  irrigation  works,  bridges,  roads,  har- 
bors, and  buildings  for  schools,  hospitals,  prisons,  and 
offices.  Many  of  these  expenditures  are  of  the  nature  of 
public  investments,  bringing  in  money  returns  to  the 
treasury  ;  and  the  government  has  been  criticised  for  its 
reluctance  to  enter  on  railroad  or  irrigation  undertakings 
when  there  seemed  no  likelihood  of  a  business  rate  of 
profit.  There  may  be  truth  in  these  criticisms,  but  they 
should  not  obscure  the  fact  that  past  the  middle  of  the 
nineteenth  century  the  Dutch  government  in  Java  was 
not  even  businesslike.  Natives  with  a  past  such  as  that 
which  has  formed  the  history  of  the  Javanese  can  afford 
for  a  time  to  do  without  liberality  or  charity  from  their 
government,  if  they  can  be  assured  that  it  will  manage 
their  public  affairs  with  reasonable  economic  foresight. 
Critics  are  not  lacking,  moreover,  who  accuse  the  govern- 
ment of  undue  extravagance. ^ 

1  Cf.  Nunen,  "  Jets  over  de  beteekenia  van  Indie  voor  Nederland,"  Ind. 
Gids,  1896,  2  :  1337-1340. 


RECENT  FISCAL  POLICY 


389 


The  last  of  the  departments  of  expenditure  requiring 
elucidation  to  show  the  development  of  Dutch  policy  since 
1870  is  that  in  which  are  grouped  the  items  education, 
religion,  and  industry.  The  last  item  is  almost  purely  of 
fiscal  interest,  embracing  only  small  outlays  for  the  ad- 
vancement of  the  arts  and  sciences,  while  the  expenditures 
on  government  undertakings  in  tin,  coal,  and  salt  form 
more  than  half  of  the  total  of  the  department  and  represent 
properly  expenses  in  the  collection  of  revenue.  The  other 
items  are  of  sufficient  importance  to  justify  a  comparison 
in  detail  between  the  figures  of  the  two  budgets. 
[Figures  in  Gulden,  000  omitted.] 


1870 


1900 


Education  of  Europeans 
Education  of  natives 
Religion 
Medical  service 


690 
300 
504 
502 


2700 

1409 

713 

2028 


When  the  Dutch  took  possession  of  Java  in  1816,  there 
was  absolutely  no  public  school  in  the  island  for  the  in- 
struction of  European  residents.  A  school  was  established 
in  that  year,  and  from  this  beginning  there  was  a  growth, 
gradual  at  first,  much  more  rapid  in  recent  years,  of 
institutions  for  the  instruction  of  European  children. ^ 
There  had  been  projects  for  the  secondary  education  of 
Europeans,  and  some  vain  attempts  to  accomplish  it  in  the 
early  period,  but  the  first  institution  destined  to  perma- 
nence was  the  Gymnasium  Willem  III,  founded  at  Batavia 

1  The  number  of  primary  schools  for  Europeans,  in  Dutch  India,  was 
as  follows,  according  to  the  summary  in  Encyc.  NI.,  3  :  76  ;  1820,  7  ; 
1833,  19;  1846,  24;  1868,  68;  1883, 'l29  ;  1888,  141;  1891,  117;  1804, 
156  ;  1898,  164. 


390  THE  DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

in  1890  and  entirely  reorganized  in  1867.  Two  other  insti- 
tutions of  the  same  kind  have  since  then  been  established, 
and  provision  is  also  made  now  for  the  higher  education 
of  girls  and  for  trade  schools.  In  view  of  the  compara- 
tively small  European  population  in  Dutch  East  India, 
little  over  sixty  thousand,  of  whom  a  relatively  small 
proportion  is  of  school  age,  the  appropriations  for  the 
education  of  Europeans  must  be  regarded  now  as 
decidedly  liberal. 

The  same  cannot  be  said  of  the  expenditures  on  the 
education  of  natives,  notwithstanding  the  advances  that 
have  been  made.  Opinions  have  differed,  it  is  true,  as  to 
the  advisability  of  educating  the  natives  of  a  dependency 
like  Java,  but  in  spite  of  any  theoretical  objections  to  the 
course,  the  practical  advantages  of  it  are  so  apparent  that 
it  is  bound  to  come.  The  Dutch  must  educate  the  higher 
class  of  natives,  whom  they  use  in  government,  for  political 
reasons,  and  they  must  educate  the  mass  of  the  people  for 
political  reasons  and  for  economic  reasons  too.^ 

Some  attempts  were  made  to  educate  the  upper  class  of 
Javanese  in  the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth  century,  but 
these  attempts  fell  far  behind  the  grandiloquent  state- 
ments of  colonial  constitutions  and  colonial  governors,  and 
bore  little  fruit.  Even  in  1848  the  grant  of  25,000  florins 
a  year,  to  be  used  for  the  education  of  native  officials,  was 
regarded  as  a  great  concession,  though  its  purposes  were 
perverted  and  it  led  to  little  practical  result.  It  was  not 
until  1866,  when  a  special  department  was  established  for 

1  Cf.  Maine,  in  "Ward,  "Reign  of  Queen  Victoria,"  Lond,,  1887, 
1  :  506,  for  the  necessity  of  popular  primary  education  in  India,  wiiere  the 
mass  of  the  people  show  the  same  helplessness  in  the  simplest  money 
transaction  that  modern  English  or  Americans  show  in  technical  questions 
of  law. 


XI  RECENT  FISCAL  POLICY  391 

education,  religion,  and  industry,  that  the  government 
began  seriously  to  grapple  with  the  problem  before  it,  and 
the  advances  made  since  that  time  are  many-fold  the  sum 
of  the  progress  attained  before.  The  scheme  of  instruc- 
tion includes  now  not  only  natives  of  the  official  class,  but 
the  common  people  as  well,  and  while  it  has  thus  extended 
its  scope  it  has  at  the  same  time  become  more  effective, 
by  being  gradually  simplified  in  the  subjects  taught  and 
in  the  methods  of  teaching.  The  proportion  of  natives 
undergoing  primary  instruction  in  Java  is  still  very  small, 
roughly  one  in  five  hundred  of  the  total  population,  and 
progress  in  the  task  of  native  education  is  hampered  by 
the  small  funds  which  even  now  are  allotted  to  it,  but 
every  movement  must  have  a  beginning,  and  this  move- 
ment for  the  education  of  the  Javanese  is  still  so  young 
that  its  prospects  appear  most  hopeful.^ 

1  I  purposely  omit  most  of  the  details  on  this  subject,  for  which  the 
reader  is  referred  to  Chailley-Bert,  Java,  Chap.  V;  Ritter,  "  Eeue 
halve  Eeuw,"  1  :  127  ;  De  Louter,  Division  3,  Chap.  V  ;  or  the  article 
"  Ondervyijs  "  iu  Encyc.  NI.,  3 :  73  ff.  The  statement  of  the  proportion  of 
the  Javanese  undergoing  instruction  is  made  up  from  figures  in  the  Jaar- 
cijfers,  1897 ;  statistics  on  this  subject  are,  however,  very  untrustworthy, 
as  is  pointed  out  by  F.  S.  A.  de  Clerq,  Ind.  Gids,  1883,  1  :  346  ;  1895, 
1  :  640.  Clerq  was  inspector  of  native  education  for  twelve  years  (De 
Econ.,  1883,  1:543),  and  his  two  articles  in  the  Indische  Gids  are 
very  valuable  for  the  proofs  of  progress  that  they  give.  When  the  normal 
schools  were  started  after  1872,  the  teachers  were  taken  largely  from  the 
European  primary  schools,  most  of  them  knew  no  native  language  and 
had  to  teach  in  Dutch  ;  the  government  was  forced  to  take  native  teach- 
ers for  the  primary  schools  of  very  poor  stuff,  for  fear  of  discouraging 
others  who  were  in  the  normal  school ;  instruction  in  the  primary  schools 
was  mechanical  and  ineffective  ;  and  the  natives  showed  little  interest 
and  gave  no  help  in  keeping  the  children  at  school.  The  later  article  by 
Clerq,  "  De  resultaten  van  het  inlaudsch  onderwijs  in  de  jaren  1888- 
1892,"  Ind.  Gids,  1895,  1  :630ff.,  shows  decided  improvement  in  many 
directions.  In  the  interval  the  Dutch  language  had  been  removed  from 
the  course  of  the  normal  schools  ;  it  had  wholly  missed  the  object  for 
which  it  was  instituted,  to  enable  the  natives  to  read  Dutch  books  and 


392  THE   DUTCH   IN   JAVA  chap. 

There  .remains  to  be  considered  in  this  sketch  of  recent 
Dutch  policy  the  subject  of  government  revenues,  to 
which  the  remainder  of  this  chapter  will  be  devoted.  It 
will  be  necessary  to  trace  the  decline  of  the  old  methods 
of  raising  revenue,  exemplified  in  the  culture  system,  and 
then  to  sketch  the  development  along  new  lines  of  the 
taxes  which  form  the  main  resource  of  the  Indian  treasury 
at  the  present  day. 

After  the  abolition  of  the  less  important  forced  cultures 
in  the  sixth  decade  of  the  century  two  only  were  left, 
those  of  sugar  and  of  coffee.  The  sugar  culture  was 
peculiar  in  that  it  had  always  given  employment  to  a  con- 
siderable number  of  Europeans,  who  carried  on  the  pro- 
cesses of  manufacture  as  contractors  under  the  government. 
The  organization  of  the  industry  under  these  Europeans 
promised  to  make  the  change  from  compulsory  services  to 
wage  labor  much  easier,  and  to  facilitate  also  the  taxation 
on  which  the  government  must  depend  for  its  revenue 
when  the  industry  was  transferred  to  private  enterprise. 
The  contractors  favored  a  change  that  would  give  them 
greater  freedom  and  the  chance  of  larger  profits,  and  the 
interests  of  private  capitalists  were  enlisted  to  influence 
the  government  in  favor  of  freedom  of  industry.  A  law 
of  1870  provided  for  a  gradual  transition  from  forced  to 
free  culture ;  beginning  in  1878,  the  amount  of  land  and 
labor  owed  by  the  natives  was  diminished  annually,  and 
in    1890    the    transition   had   been   completely   effected. 

newspapers.  The  best  natives  could  understand  only  children's  books  in 
Dutch,  and  many  failed  in  the  language  who  would  have  made  good  teach- 
ers. See  J.  H.  J.  Laats,  "  Over  het  nut  der  veranderingen  die  .  .  .  in  de 
reorganisatie  van  het  inlandsche  ouderwijs  zijn  gebracht,"  Ind.  Gids,  1892, 
1 : 2.  Chailley-Bert,  Java,  310,  pictures  the  natives  now  as  eager  for 
school  instruction. 


XI  RECENT  FISCAL  POLICY  393 

Meanwhile  the  planters  were  bound  to  pay  the.  natives 
wages  considerably  higher  than  those  customary  under 
the  culture  system,  and  to  pay  them  for  their  land  as  well, 
and  in  addition  to  pay  to  the  government  a  tax  on  the 
sugar  produced,  varying  from  two  to  three  gulden  per 
pikol  (133  lb.).  The  government  lost  slightly  by  the 
change,  receiving  according  to  Pierson's  estimates  4,000,- 
000  gulden  annually  in  place  of  over  5,000,000  that  it  had 
been  making  by  the  sale  of  sugar  in  the  previous  period. 
But  the  natives  gained  very  decidedly,  and  the  profits  to 
the  planters  were  sufficient  to  lead  to  a  rapid  extension  of 
the  culture  outside  the  bounds  that  the  government  had 
formerly  set  for  it.  Between  1871  and  1884  fifty  new 
sugar  factories  were  built,  and  the  production  rose  from 
2,725,000  pikols  to  6,495,000  pikols.i 

This  period  of  progress  in  the  sugar  industry  has  been 
followed  by  one  of  depression  that  has  developed  into  a 
real  crisis  in  recent  years.  It  was  said  recently  that  of 
the  one  hundred  and  ninety  sugar  factories  in  Java,  fifty 
often  worked  at  a  loss,  and  of  the  others  only  twenty  were 
really  profitable. ^  The  United  States  consul  reported 
that  the  sugar  industry  was  "in  a  hopeless  condition," 
that  only  one-tenth  of  the  plantations  were  paying.^  But 
there  is  no  evidence  to  connect  this  decline  with  the 
change  from  government  to  private  management.  It  is 
due  to  the  ravages  of  the  sereh^  and  to  the  fall  in  price 
caused  by  the  increase  of  production  throughout  the  world 
and  by  the  European  bounty  system.     On  the  other  hand, 

1  Boissevain,  "  Ned.  Ind.,"  De  Gids,  1887,  2  :  341. 

3  Peelen,  "Java's  suikerindustrie,"  De  Economist,  1893,  1  :  399. 

8  U.  S.  Commercial  Relations,  1896-1897,  1 :  1040.  In  1898  (p.  1065), 
the  consul  reported  that  sugar  was  doing  better,  as  a  result  of  the  Spanish- 
American  War  and  of  the  repeal  of  the  export  duty. 


394  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

it  may  bp  said  that  the  free  industry  is  bearing  up  against 
difficulties  that  would  have  absolutely  crushed  the  govern- 
ment culture  if  it  had  been  maintained,  — that  would  have 
crushed  the  natives  engaged  in  the  culture,  for  it  was 
they  who  bore  all  losses.  Under  the  culture  system, 
without  the  spur  of  competition,  machinery  and  processes 
were  extremely  crude.  The  American  consul  at  Batavia 
wrote  in  1862  that  it  was  impossible  to  introduce  im- 
proved agricultural  implements  in  Java,  because  of  the 
prejudices  and  lack  of  energy  of  the  people  there. ^  The 
free  planters  inherited  traditional  methods  from  their 
predecessors,  but  when  the  crisis  came,  they  were  fit  to 
meet  it  by  the  flexibility  of  a  free  organization.  They 
introduced  improvements  in  all  branches  of  the  industry, 
in  machinery,  in  processes,  and  in  cultivation.  The  gov- 
ernment has  been  obliged  to  give  up  the  tax  on  sugar 
production  or  export,  which,  after  being  suspended  for 
a  number  of  years,  was  finally  abolished  in  1898.  The 
wages  of  native  cultivators  have  fallen  to  some  extent. 
But  the  brunt  of  the  blow  has  been  borne  by  the  individ- 
ual planters,  who  have  succeeded  by  energy  and  economy 
in  reducing  very  considerably  the  costs  of  production. ^ 

But  one  government  culture  remains  to  be  considered, 
the  most  important  of  all  in  the  past  and  the  only  one 
that  is  still  maintained,  the  coffee  culture.  Under  the  old 
system  coffee  alone  returned  more  than  four-fifths  of  the 
total  revenue  that  was  obtained  from  the  sale  of  products 
by  the  government ;  the  large  profits  were  an  index  of 

1  U.  S.  Commercial  Relations,  1862,  287. 

2  De  Vries,  De  Gids,  1895,  1 :  283 ;  De  Economist,  1889,  187.  The 
mean  product,  in  pikols  per  bouw,  has  risen  from  52.88  in  1881  to  91.86 
in  1897.     "Jaarcijfers,  Kolonien,"  1897,  54. 


XI  RECENT  FISCAL  POLICY  396 

the  strength  of  the  culture,  and  led  to  its  being  retained 
for  fiscal  reasons  long  after  the  other  cultures  had  been 
abolished.  In  1898  the  government  coffee  culture  was 
still  imposed  on  250,157  families,  scattered  through  four- 
teen of  the  twenty  residencies  into  which  Java  is  divided. 
In  the  budget  of  1900  the  receipts  of  the  government 
from  the  sale  of  coffee  are  estimated  at  10,185,815  gulden, 
out  of  total  receipts  estimated  at  141,931,008  gulden,  and 
the  specific  expenditures  on  account  of  the  coffee  culture 
are  put  at  5,713,561  gulden. 

The  cultivation  of  coffee  differed  from  that  of  sugar  in 
organization,  in  that  no  elaborate  processes  were  necessary 
to  prepare  the  crop  for  market,  and  the  whole  industry 
was  carried  on  by  natives.  The  lack  of  a  class  of  Euro- 
peans, standing  in  established  relations  with  the  native 
cultivators,  was  an  argument  against  abolishing  the  forced 
culture,  for  it  was  asserted  that  the  natives  would  be  left 
to  themselves  and  would  cease  to  produce  for  export  at 
all.  Individual  planters  were  no  longer,  as  formerly,  dis- 
couraged from  settling  in  the  island;  they  were  given 
opportunity  to  lease  land  and  make  contracts  for  labor 
with  the  natives,  and  the  production  of  coffee  on  private 
account  has  increased  until  it  amounts  to  more  than  that 
carried  on  under  the  government.  But  the  government 
has  resolutely  upheld  its  own  interest  in  the  coffe.e  culture, 
seeking  by  changes  in  detail  to  remedy  the  abuses  of  the 
old  system  and  to  increase  its  efficiency.  The  payment  of 
percentages  on  production  was  abolished  in  1865,  in  the 
case  of  European  officials,  because  of  its  bad  effect  on  both 
officials  and  natives,  and  the  pay  of  the  cultivators  has 
been  raised.  Percentages  are  still  retained  for  the  native 
officials,    who    are    the    superintendents   of    cultivation. 


398  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

Under  their  direction  work  is  carried  on  in  a  careless  and 
half-hearted  way.     Attempts  to  introduce  a  more  inten- 
sive cultivation   and  better   treatment  of  the  crop  have 
failed  because  the  interests  of  the  natives  are  not  enlisted, 
and  it  is  said  that  the  quality  of  the  product  is  declining. ^ 
With  the  fall  in  the  price  of  coffee,  due  to  increased 
supply  in  the  world's  market,  and  the  consequent  decline 
in   profits,  the   motive  for   maintaining  the  government 
culture  has   grown  weaker.     The   government  has  had, 
moreover,  to  contend  with  the  ravages  of  the  coffee  blight, 
which  reached  Java  in  1879  and  which  has  ruined  many 
plantations.     Before  the  date  named,  in  1875,  a  committee 
of  the  Second    Chamber,  after  studying  a  report  of  the 
chief  inspector  of  cultures,  advised  that  the  government 
culture  should  be  discontinued,  but  the  Chamber  rejected 
the   report.     Again,    in    1888,    a   royal  commission   was 
appointed  to  report  on  the  government  culture,  and  after 
a  thorough  investigation  advised  that  this  last  remnant 
of  the  culture  system  should  be  given  up.     No  decisive 
action  was  taken,  but  the  Chamber  recommended  that  the 
government  should  give  up  the  monopoly  rights  that  it 
had  exercised  over  the  production  of  individual  natives, 
and  should  either  pay  natives  bound  to  the  culture  full 
wages  or  lease  the  plantations.     A  subsidy  was  granted  to 
go  in  part  toward  raising  the  price  paid  the  cultivators, 
who  were  reported  as  suffering  severely  in  some  districts. 
The  judgment  passed  against  the  forced  coffee  culture 

1  U.  S.  Commercial  Relations,  1898,  1066  ;  Van  Soest,  "De  koffijkul- 
tuur  op  Java,"  De  Economist,  1872,  1  :  128.  For  the  shiftlessness  and 
low  returns  on  government  plantations  see  Tijd.  TLV.,  1884,  29  :  513 ; 
Jenks,  Report,  59.  An  anonymous  article,  "  De  zegen  der  Gouverne- 
ments  koffiekultuur,"  Ind.  Gids,  1898,  1  :  159  ff.,  shows  that  all  the  old 
abuses  of  the  forced  culture  persist  to  the  present  day. 


XI  RECENT  FISCAL  POLICY  397 

by  the  Second  Chamber  has  not  yet  been  carried  into 
execution.  The  government  is  reluctant  to  abandon  the 
revenue  that  comes  from  this  source,  and  the  treasury  finds 
enough  supporters  in  the  Dutch  parliament  to  enable  it  to 
resist  successfully  the  abolition  of  the  culture.^  Little 
by  little,  however,  the  last  of  the  forced  cultures  is 
passing  away.  Of  the  natives  engaged  in  the  culture 
nearly  half  are  now  freed  from  the  obligation  of  planting 
more  trees  to  replace  those  that  die  out,  and  since  1894 
forced  culture  and  delivery  of  coffee  have  been  entirely 
abolished  in  four  of  the  residencies  where  they  formerly 
prevailed.  The  change  to  complete  freedom  is  sure  to 
come  and  will  probably  be  not  long  delayed. 

The  government  has  had  a  simple  problem  to  settle  in 
its  policy  with  respect  to  the  forced  cultures ;  it  has  been 
able  at  any  time,  when  it  chose  to  forego  the  revenue 
coming  from  them,  to  decree  the  abolition  of  the  cultures, 
with  the  certainty  that  all  the  sacrifices  which  they  im- 
posed upon  the  natives  would  cease.  It  could  end  the 
forced  services  on  which  the  cultures  rested  because  it 
had  created  them.  Its  power,  however,  over  the  forced 
services  owed  inside  the  native  organization  is  far  less 
complete,  and  its  effort  to  regulate  these  services  and  free 
them  of  their  abuses  has  led  to  a  long  struggle,  making 
in  its  results  no  great  showing  in  the  treasury  statements, 
but  of  hardly  less  import  to  native  welfare  than  the  aboli- 
tion of  the  forced  cultures  themselves. 

In  an  undeveloped  economic  and  political  organization, 
such  as  was  that  of  the  Javanese  in  the  period  before 

1  See  the  articles  by  Wessels  in  Ind.  Gids,  1894  and  1895,  for  the  mix- 
ture of  fiscal  and  humanitarian  considerations  appearing  in  the  debates  in 
the  Second  Chamber  on  the  abolition  of  the  culture. 


398  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

Dutch  rule,  labor  services  took  the  place  in  large  part  of 
money  taxes. ^  In  the  period  of  primitive  simplicity  these 
services  had,  in  general,  imposed  no  very  serious  burden 
on  the  common  people,  and  were  rendered  only  by  those 
who  possessed  land  and  were  competent  to  bear  them. 
Under  Dutch  influence,  however,  the  services  became 
vastly  more  onerous,  and  were  exacted  from  a  constantly 
increasing  proportion  of  the  people,  including  even  those 
who  had  no  land  of  their  own.^ 

Besides  the  demands  made  on  the  people  for  the  gov- 
ernment cultures  the  forced  services  comprised  the  follow- 
ing. First,  there  were  the  "general"  services,  devoted 
to  objects  of  common  welfare,  especially  the  preservation 
of  public  order  and  the  maintenance  of  roads. ^  Secondly, 
there  were  the  "  special "  services,  so  called,  comprising 
work  on  a  great  variety  of  objects  ;  the  most  important 
item  in  this  class  was  the  pantjen  services,  by  which 
native  officials,  without  charge  to  themselves,  secured 
for  their  personal  use  a  part  of  the  working  time  of  the 
people.*     Finally  there  were  the  communal  services,  cor- 

1  Even  now  in  Europe  and  America  taxes  are  sometimes  "  worked 
out,"  and  of  course  in  an  earlier  period  tlie  pajmient  of  dues  in  labor  was 
universal.  For  a  comparison  of  the  practices  in  Java  and  in  Europe  see 
A.  F.  de  Kooy,  "  Heerendiensten,  een  vergelijkende  studie,"  Ind.  Gids, 
1893,  1  :  357  ff. 

2  See  Eindresum^,  3:  Bijlage  K.,  ii,  p.  149  ff.,  "Extracten  uit  de  ant- 
woorden  van  de  Residenten,  .  .  .  1861 ;"  reports  given  there  show  that 
the  process  had  proceeded  much  farther  in  some  residencies  than  in  others. 

8  According  to  the  statement  for  the  residency  Soerabaya,  given  by 
Rees,  "  Hervorming"  (1863),  Ind.  Gids,  1885,  1  :  729,  the  services  of  this 
class  amounted  to  nearly  four  million  working  days  a  year,  of  which  over 
half  were  given  to  the  guard-houses,  and  over  quarter  to  work  on  the 
roads.  The  only  other  item  of  importance  was  the  maintenance  of 
irrigation  canals. 

*  See  the  details  given  by  Rees,  ih.,  p.  731.  A  comparison  of  the  labor 
services  exacted  with  the  figures  of  population  in  Soerabaya  might  seem 


XI  RECENT  FISCAL  POLICY  800 

responding  to  the  local  taxes  in  a  modern  state  ;  they 
consumed  a  vast  but  indeterminate  amount  of  labor,  in  the 
building  and  maintenance  of  roads,  bridges,  and  enclosures 
in  and  about  the  villages,  in  watch  and  patrol  duty,  and 
in  personal  service  for  the  village  officials. 

There  were  local  differences  in  the  system  on  which 
these  forced  services  were  levied  that  need  not  be  de- 
scribed here ;  more  important  were  the  differences  in  the 
amount  of  the  services  in  the  various  localities,  which  had 
increased  until  in  some  districts  the  people  were  almost 
crushed  by  the  weight  of  the  services,  while  in  others  the 
oppression  caused  by  them  was  comparatively  small.  ^  A 
common  characteristic  of  the  system  in  all  localities  was 
its  wastefulness  ;  the  labor  was  given  grudgingly,  and 
was  ineffective,  both  for  that  reason  and  for  lack  of 
proper  direction. ^ 

Proposals  for  the  reform  of  the  system  of  forced  ser- 
vices had  been  made  even  as  far  back  as  the  time  of  the 

to  promise  instruction,  but  would  be  more  likely  to  mislead  ;  the  oificial 
statistics  of  forced  services  were  notoriously  inaccurate,  representing  in 
most  cases  only  the  minimum  of  labor  required. 

1 1  speak  here  of  services  distinct  from  those  demanded  for  government 
cultures.  Even  in  1888  a  local  investigation  showed  that  the  government 
had  no  notion  of  the  real  amount  of  forced  services  exacted  in  Soerabaya  ; 
in  some  cases  forced  services  and  taxes  amounted  to  more  than  the  yield 
of  the  land  after  the  proper  costs  of  cultivation  had  been  deducted.  See 
Dedem,  "De  agrarische  kwestie  op  Java,"  Ind.  Gids,  1890,  2:  2134. 

2  I  have  referred  before  to  this  point,  the  uselessness  of  much  of  the 
work  required  of  the  natives  ;  an  example,  dating  from  the  period  after 
the  culture  system,  is  given  by  S.  L.  W.  van  der  Elst,  "  Arbeidsverspilling 
op  Java,"  TNI.,  1875,  4:1:  348-350.  During  a  time  of  scarcity  thousands 
of  natives  in  Malang  (Pasoeroean)  were  employed,  without  compensation, 
in  constructing  a  gutter  along  the  roads.  The  gutter  was  badly  made,  was 
useless  in  many  places,  and  a  public  nuisance  in  others.  The  result  was 
that  after  a  time  the  government  ordered  that  the  gutter  should  be  in  some 
places  partly,  in  others  wholly,  filled  up. 


400  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

Company,  and  had  sometimes  found  expression  in  the  form 
of  laws.  It  was  not,  however,  until  the  change  of  spirit 
shown  in  the  abolition  of  the  culture  system  that  laws  on 
this  subject  could  be  carried  out  with  any  efficiency.  The 
colonial  constitution  of  1854  ordained  that  the  Governor 
General  should  determine  the  conditions  of  service  in  the 
various  localities,  and  should  revise  these  conditions 
every  five  years  with  a  view  to  diminishing  the  burden  of 
the  services  as  far  as  practicable.  It  was  impossible  at  the 
time  to  satisfy  the  requirements  of  this  constitution  ;  the 
Dutch  government  was  still  too  much  in  the  dark  concern- 
ing the  facts  of  the  native  organization  to  be  able  to 
establish  the  local  regulations  which  the  variety  of  cus- 
toms demanded.  In  1864,  however,  some  general  regula- 
tions were  issued,  defining  the  services  that  might  be 
exacted,  and  establishing  one  day  per  week  as  the  maxi- 
mum labor  due  from  the  landholders  on  whom  the  ser- 
vices were  held  to  rest ;  local  officials  were  to  make  the 
facts  conform  to  these  regulations  as  well  as  they  could. 
At  five-year  intervals  down  to  1890  these  regulations 
were  re^dsed,  tending  always  to  further  restriction  of  the 
services.^  Outside  the  line  of  these  revisions  an  impor- 
tant reform  was  carried,  in  the  restriction  and  final  aboli- 
tion of  the  pantjen  services  due  to  native  officials,  which 
had  been  a  source  of  great  abuse.  The  government  pro- 
posed to  recompense  the  officials  for  the  loss  of  these  ser- 
vices from  the  proceeds  of  a  poll-tax  of  a  gulden  imposed 
on  natives  subject  to   services.     The   yield   of   the    tax 

1  Pfeil,  Stidsee,  251,  asserts  that  one  important  reason  why  the  forced 

services  were  given  up  was  the  decline  of  the  authority  of  the  whites  over 
the  natives,  due  to  the  conflict  between  political  parties.  This  is,  so  far 
as  I  know,  a  pure  figment  of  the  imagination  ;  no  facts  are  cited  to  sup- 
port the  statement,  and  I  know  none  that  could  be  cited. 


XI  EECENT  FISCAL  POLICY  401 

proved  to  be  much  more  than  sufficient  for  this  purpose, 
and  in  recent  years  the  excess  has  been  applied  to  the 
commuting  of  other  forced  services.^ 

However  valuable  were  the  general  regulations  of  forced 
services,  as  showing  the  spirit  and  aims  of  the  govern- 
ment, they  did  not  satisfy  the  need  for  the  specific  local 
regulations  which  the  colonial  constitution  of  1854  had 
projected.  The  variety  of  local  custom  made  it  impossi- 
ble to  follow  general  rules,  and  threw  on  the  shoulders 
of  the  administrative  officials  a  great  responsibility  in 
settling  doubtful  points. ^  The  decade  since  1890  has 
marked  a  new  period ;  the  legislative  branch  of  the  gov- 
ernment has  finally  taken  up  the  problem  of  local  regula- 
tion, and  has  established,  in  a  long  series  of  laws,  the 
conditions  of  forced  service  in  the  various  residencies  of 
Java.^  Based  on  local  investigation  of  the  facts,  these 
laws  represent  the  aim  of  the  legislator  for  the  first  time 
in  thoroughly  practicable  form ;  they  have  led  to  the 
reform  of  many  abuses  and  promise  steady  improvement 
in  the  future.  Of  especial  importance  has  been  the  con- 
trol exercised  over  the  communal  services,  which  the  gov- 
ernment had  previously  been  unable  to  reach  and  which 
greatly  needed  reform. 

1  The  tax  was  first  applied  in  1882,  and  the  government  pocketed  the 
surplus  until  1887  in  defiance  of  criticism.  Even  before  the  law  was 
passed  it  had  been  attacked,  because  it  would  exact  an  unnecessarily 
large  sum  from  the  natives  and  because  of  other  weaknesses  ;  see  G.  F.  C. 
Rose,  "De  af schafiing  van  depantjen-diensten,"  Ind.  Gids,  1881,  2 :  737-741. 

2  The  article  by  De  Wolff  van  Westerode,  "Proeve  eener  regeling  van 
de  controle  op  de  heerendiensten,"  Ind.  Gids,  1893,  2:1121  ff.,  shows 
how  much  could  be  done  by  an  administrative  official,  on  his  own  initia- 
tive, to  organize  the  system  of  forced  services  and  to  remedy  its  abuses. 

3  A  good  idea  of  the  extent  and  complexity  of  this  legislation  can  be 
gained  from  L.  W.  C.  van  den  Berg,  "  Het  inlandsche  gemeentewezen," 

2d 


402  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

Naturally  enough  some  are  dissatisfied  even  now  with 
the  progress  that  the  government  has  made  and  urge  a 
more  rapid  advance ;  they  argue,  from  the  experience  of 
Europe,  that  a  system  of  money  taxes  is  far  better  than 
a  system  of  forced  services,  and  urge  the  complete  substi- 
tution of  one  for  the  other. ^  On  the  other  hand  it  must 
be  remembered  that  the  passage  from  payment  in  kind  to 
payment  in  money  occupied  a  long  period  in  European 
history,  that  Java  has  only  just  emerged  from  an  economic 
state  that  may  be  styled  mediaeval,  and  that  it  has  required 
all  available  energy  to  bring  the  system  of  money  taxes 
to  its  present  development.  Indian  officials,  writing  from 
a  full  knowledge  of  the  conditions,  are  inclined  to  justify 
the  old  system  of  forced  services,  and  to  emphasize  the 
difficulty  of  an  entire  change  to  money  taxes,  while  the 
natives  are  still  so  backward  and  the  corps  of  European 
officials  so  small  in  proportion  to  them.^ 

By  freeing  the  natives  from  forced  labor  the  Dutch 
have  attained  at  last  the  "  system  of  taxation  "  which  had 
been  the  ideal  of  Dirk  van  Hogendorp  and  other  colonial 
reformers  at  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century. 
Several  aspects  of  this  change  have  already  been  consid- 
ered, and  its  importance  has  been  emphasized.  There 
seems  no  occasion,  however,  to  describe  here  in  detail  the 
means  by  which  the  government  has  raised  its  revenues 
since  it  has  adopted  its  new  course.     Technical  measures 

Bijd.  TLV.,  1901,  6:8:39,  81-88,  or  the  table  in  Encyc.  NX.,  3:28- 
29.  An  example  of  a  law  on  the  regulation  of  services  is  printed  in 
Eindresumfi,  3  :  Bijlage  M. 

1  Cf.  P.  C.  Huijser,  "  Het  verband  tusschen  heeren-en  cultuurdiensten 
en  de  indische  tekorten,"  Ind.  Gids,  1899,  2  :  1362  ff. 

2  For  a  presentation  of  this  view  see  Ernst,  "  Afschaffing  of  apkoop- 
baarstelling  der  heerendiensten  op  Java  ?  "  Ind.  Gids,  1890,  2  :  1434  ff. 


XI  RECENT  FISCAL  POLICY  403 

of  taxation  hardly  lend  themselves  to  generalization,  and 
readers  who  are  curious  in  this  matter  are  referred  to 
another  place,  where  it  has  been  treated  with  some  ful- 
ness. ^  I  can  attempt  here  only  a  bare  summary,  reserving 
for  detailed  treatment  only  ofte  tax,  the  land-tax,  the  most 
important  of  all  at  the  present  time,  and  the  most  signifi- 
cant in  its  historical  development. 

One  process  to  which  the  Dutch  have  applied  them- 
selves in  their  fiscal  reforms  in  the  course  of  the  century 
has  been  that  of  simplification.  An  immense  number  of 
devices  for  raising  revenue  had  grown  up  in  various  parts 
of  Java,  some  springing  from  the  native  organization, 
some  from  Dutch  governors.  From  the  number  the 
Dutch  have  had  to  select  those  that  offered  the  greatest 
revenue  and  the  least  disadvantages.  They  have  retained 
some  that  are  open  to  criticism,  such  as  the  opium  and 
salt  monopolies,  but  they  have  abolished  others  that  were 
still  more  injurious  to  native  welfare,  and  they  have  made 
those  which  they  retained  into  a  reasonably  consistent 
system. 

They  have  introduced  new  taxes,  on  European  models, 
and  they  have  supplied  in  part  the  loss  of  the  revenues 
that  used  to  come  from  the  forced  cultures  by  the  exten- 
sion of  government  undertakings  depending  on  free  labor. 
Finally,  they  have  improved  the  working  of  the  whole 
tax  system  by  bringing  under  public  administration  taxes 
that  were  formerly  farmed  out  to  independent  contractors, 
and  by  stimulating  new  energy  and  a  new  spirit  of 
humanity  in  the  whole  corps  of    revenue  ofiicials. 

A  measure  of  the  difficulties  encountered  and  of    the 

1  See  the  essay  on  the  Dutch  Colonial  Fiscal  System  cited  at  the  head 
of  the  chapter. 


404  THE  DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

success  attained  can  be  secured  from  a  study  of  the  his- 
tory of  the  land-tax.  In  earlier  chapters  the  process  has 
been  described  by  which  this  tax,  that  began  its  existence 
as  a  thoroughly  European  measure  in  the  brain  of  Raffles, 
escaped  from  the  control  of  i£s  founder  and  his  successors, 
and  changed  its  character  completely  in  contact  with 
the  native  organization.  It  will  be  necessary  now  to 
describe  the  actual  working  of  the  tax  in  the  modern 
period  and  the  attempts  that  have  been  made  to  raise  its 
character. 

Reports  dating  from  the  middle  of  the  century  furnish 
full  descriptions  of  the  operations  of  the  tax  at  that  time. 
The  principles  on  which  it  had  been  established  had  been 
abandoned  so  completely  that  it  preserved  the  same  form 
in  no  two  localities. ^  European  officials  attempted  to 
secure  from  the  natives  figures  of  the  rice  yield  on  which 
they  could  base  the  assessment  of  the  tax,  but  they  were 
unable  to  check  or  verify  these  figures,  which  reached 
them  falsified  or  purely  fictitious.  The  European  officials 
were  utterly  unable  to  tell  what  the  natives  could  or 
should  pay ;  they  knew  only  what  the  natives  had  paid  in 
the  past.  They  juggled  with  the  figures  that  they  had 
then,  until  they  got  a  result  differing  little  from  that  of 
previous  years,  and  set  this  as  the  tax  for  the  year. 2 

They  inclined  to  raise  the  tax  a  little  every  year,  and 
the  critical  point  in  the  process  of  assessment  came  when 

1  "It  works  differently  in  almost  every  residency,"  Memorie,  1844,  S. 
van  Deventer,  LS. ,  3  :  192  ;  there  were  differences  even  inside  a  residency, 
ib.,  264. 

2  In  some  cases  they  actually  reversed  the  theoretical  process ;  starting 
from  the  sum  which  they  desired  to  raise  they  deduced  from  that  statis- 
tics of  the  crop  of  the  year  I  See  the  Nota  of  Van  der  Poel,  1860,  S.  van 
Deventer,  LS.,  3  :  264-266. 


XI  RECENT  FISCAL  POLICY  405 

they  made  known  their  demands  to  the  village  govern- 
ments on  whom  the  tax  was  levied.  The  European  offi- 
cials would  then  assert  that  the  natives  had  paid  too  little 
in  the  past  in  proportion  to  the  yield  of  the  land  and  in 
comparison  with  other  villages;  they  would  charge  the 
natives  with  concealing  the  facts  of  their  prosperity ;  and 
they  would  threaten  to  take  away  the  land  of  the  villagers. 
The  village  heads,  on  the  other  hand,  would  protest  that 
they  had  paid  too  much  in  the  past,  and  that  the  natives 
would  be  ruined  if  the  government  did  not  lower  its 
demands.!  The  amount  of  the  tax  was  finally  settled, 
not  on  general  principles  and  by  reference  to  ascertained 
facts,  but  by  the  issue  of  this  personal  contest  between  a 
European  oflBcial  and  the  representatives  of  the  village 
government.  Shrewdness  and  bluster  were  the  determin- 
ing factors,  when  neither  side  had  an  accurate  knowledge 
of  the  other's  position. 

The  faults  of  this  system  of  higgling,  known  as  the 
admodatie  stelsel,  are  apparent.  It  led  to  great  injustices 
in  the  distribution  of  burdens  among  the  villages,  and 
these  injustices  were  multiplied  in  the  assessing  of  indi- 
viduals inside  a  village,  a  process  with  which  the  Euro- 
pean government  did  not  concern  itself  at  all.  The  tax, 
being  unjust,  was  also  inefficient,  for  individuals  and  vil- 
lages used  the  strength  that  should  have  borne  taxes  to 
shift  the  burden  on  the  weaker  members  of  the  society  ; 
these  might  be  overtaxed  and  still  give  the  government 
but  slight  returns.  The  only  justification  of  such  a  sys- 
tem was  its  practicability.  The  European  officials  were 
few ;  by  this  system  they  made  the  natives  do  much  of 

1  See  the  description  by  a  resident,  quoted  in  a  letter  of  Merkus,  1844, 
S.  van  De venter,  LS.,  3  :  205. 


406  THE  DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

their  work.  They  were  ignorant  of  actual  conditions,  and 
they  found  in  this  system  something  that  would  work  in 
the  dark. 

The  faults  of  the  land-tax  became  more  prominent  as 
the  culture  system  disappeared,  and  they  called  forth  an 
elaborate  reform  measure  which  became  law  in  1872. 
The  new  law  did  not  attempt  to  introduce  individual 
instead  of  village  settlement,  but  it  did  aim  to  establish 
certain  general  principles  on  which  the  tax  should  be 
assessed.  Lands  were  to  be  classified  and  taxed  accord- 
ing to  the  yield,  and  the  normal  tax  was  to  be  one-fifth 
of  the  gross  product.  The  law  has  been  severely  criti- 
cised for  making  the  gross  instead  of  the  net  product  the 
basis  of  assessment,^  but  there  is  little  need  to  discuss  this 
or  other  of  its  details.  Like  so  many  other  reform  meas- 
ures, this  law  was  passed  before  the  government  had  the 
knowledge  and  resources  necessary  to  insure  its  execution, 
and  has  remained  in  most  points  a  dead  letter.  It  proved 
impossible  to  classify  the  fields  satisfactorily  even  once, 
and  utterly  out  of  the  question  to  renew  the  classification 
every  five  years,  as  the  law  intended ;  and  the  old  assess- 
ment, settled  by  higgling,  continued  still  to  be  the  basis 
of  taxation. 

To  this  day  the  character  of  the  land-tax  has  not 
changed  materially  in  its  operations  over  the  greater  part 
of  Java.  The  government  sent  an  agent  to  study  the 
methods  of  taxation  in  British  India  in  1878  and  ordered 
an  investigation  in  Java  the  following  year ;  following 
these  investigations  came  a  project  of  law  which  would 
have  retained  the  admodatie  stelsel  to  a  certain  extent,  but 

1  See  K.  W.  van  Gorkom,  "De  landrente  op  Java  en  Madoera."  De 
Gids,  1879,  2  :  402  ;  Wessels,  "  De  landrente  op  Java,'"  De  Econ.,  1889.  84. 


XI  RECENT  FISCAL   POLICY  407 

would  have  modified  it  by  imposing  a  small  fixed  tax  on 
the  land  of  the  natives  in  addition  to  the  variable  pay- 
ment.^  The  government  would  not  accept  even  this 
modification.  Taught  by  experience,  it  has  clung  to  the 
old  tax,  tending  in  recent  years  to  fix  with  some  perma- 
nence even  the  amount  of  the  assessment. ^ 

A  recent  writer  makes  the  land-tax  the  chief  blot  on 
the  government  of  Java,^  and  of  course  it  is  open  to 
serious  criticism  from  the  European  standpoint.  In  prin- 
ciple it  is  bad.  In  practice,  however,  it  has  undergone 
great  changes  in  the  last  twenty  years.  While  the  popu- 
lation has  grown  with  astonishing  rapidity  in  that  period, 
the  government  has  allowed  the  sum  of  the  tax  to  remain 
almost  unchanged.  It  has  strengthened  the  personnel  of 
the  administration  in  quantity  and  in  quality,  and  has 
corrected  many  faults  in  the  local  operation  of  the  tax.^ 
Such  abuses  as  are  inherent  in  the  principles  of  the  tax 
have  been  minimized,  and  can  be  borne  until  the  govern- 
ment can  carry  out  the  general  reform  which  is  now  in 
process  of  preparation. 

1  See  a  criticism  of  this  project  of  J.  H.  F.  Sollewijii  Gelpke  by  L. 
Wessels,  in  Ind.  Gids,  1887,  2  :  1839-1868  ;  1888,  1  :  11-24.  Other  projects 
are  set  forth  in  detail,  ib.,  1889,  1  :  153  ff.;  1891,  1 :  979  ff.  Some  slight 
experiments  were  made  on  other  lines,  following  the  proposals  of  P.  H. 
van  der  Kemp. 

'^  See  for  details  of  this  tendency  to  permanence  of  settlement  Kol. 
Verslag,  1898,  i.  2,  63  ;  Encyc.  NL,  2  :  357. 

3  L.  Wessels,  "  De  landrente  in  verband  met  het  kadaster  op  Java," 
Ind.  Gids,  1890,  1  :  91.  One  feels  in  reading  this  and  other  articles  by 
Wessels  (cf.  De  Econ.,  1889,  82-99),  that  the  author  is  too  theoretical, 
and  is  giving  counsel  of  perfection,  not  for  practice. 

*  An  example  of  the  change  in  spirit  in  the  administration  of  the  tax 
is  given  in  a  table  by  J.  E.  Meyboom,  "  Bezuinigen,"  Ind.  Gids,  1899, 
2  :  1202  ;  this  table  gives  the  exemptions  from  taxation  for  failure  of 
crops  in  the  period  1878-1897,  and  shows  a  great  increase  in  the  second 
decade. 


408  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap,  xi 

The  great  condition  for  a  general  reform  is  an  accu- 
rate knowledge  of  the  economic  status  of  the  individual 
natives ;  especially  necessary  is  a  record  of  the  tenure 
and  productivity  of  land  such  as  is  given  by  cadastral 
surveys.  The  Dutch  government,  after  a  long  series  of 
attempts  and  failures,  has  realized  that  it  is  incompetent 
to  undertake  the  work  of  making  a  cadaster  for  all  of 
Java  at  once.  It  has  begun  one,  however,  in  one  of  the 
local  divisions,  and  has  founded  on  it  a  reform  of  the  land- 
tax  which  embodies  the  ideals  of  the  most  progressive 
officials.  In  a  considerable  part  of  the  residency  Pre- 
anger  regencies  the  land-tax  is  now  imposed  on  indi- 
viduals, not  on  village  groups,  and  is  calculated  not  on 
the  gross  produce  but  on  an  approximation  to  the  net 
produce  of  the  land.^  An  extra  number  of  officials  has 
been  set  at  work  in  this  district  to  carry  out  the  necessary 
investigations  and  surveys,  and  the  results  have  been  so 
satisfactory  that  the  change  can  now  be  regarded  as 
assured,  and  will  undoubtedly  be  extended  in  time  to 
other  parts  of  the  island. 

1  See  the  text  of  the  law  of  1896,  and  an  appreciation  and  criticism  of 
it  by  Wessels,  in  De  Economist,  April,  1897,  291-316.  A  summary  of  it 
and  of  earlier  legislation  will  be  found  in  Encyc.  NI.,  2 :  368  ff. 


CHAPTER   XII 

THE  MODERN  GOVERNMENT  AND  PROVINCIAL 
ADMINISTRATION 

"PRECEDING  chapters  have  been  occupied  with  a  de- 
-*-  scription  of  Dutch  policy  in  the  recent  period ;  the 
aim  of  these  chapters  has  been  to  show  the  objects  and 
results  of  legislation  and  administration.  The  aim  of 
this  concluding  chapter  will  be  the  description  of  the 
mechanism  of  government,  by  which  the  policy  has  been 
made  effective.  It  will  be  necessary  to  show  how  the 
powers  of  legislation  are  distributed,  and  what  arrange- 
ments are  made  for  applying  the  general  rules  of  the 
legislators  by  administrative  officials. 

The  organization  of  the  Dutch  Indian  government  is 
determined  by  a  great  number  of  laws,  which  seek  to 
regulate  its  workings  down  to  the  small  details  with 
legal  nicety.  Even  a  summary  of  these  laws,  in  the  form 
of  a  handbook  for  students,  occupies  more  space  than  this 
whole  book.  It  will  be  necessary,  therefore,  if  the  ground 
is  to  be  covered  in  one  chapter,  to  omit  all  but  the  most 
essential  facts,  and  to  sacrifice  exactness  to  the  purposes 
of  a  general  sketch. 

The  government  of  Dutch  India  may  be  divided  into 
three  parts,  each  part  with  peculiar  functions  correspond- 
ing to  its  distinct  geographical  position.  The  home 
government  at  The  Hague  is  concerned  especially  with 

409 


410  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

legislation.  The  central  colonial  government  at  Batavia 
combines  the  functions  of  legislation  and  administration  ; 
it  receives  the  general  rules  which  have  been  formulated 
in  the  Netherlands,  elaborates  them,  and  transmits  them 
to  the  places  where  they  are  to  be  carried  into  practical 
effect.  The  officials  of  the  provincial  and  local  adminis- 
tration, finally,  scattered  throughout  the  Malay  Archi- 
pelago, make  realities  of  the  rules  by  applying  them  to 
the  concrete  questions  with  which  they  are  confronted. 
The  power  of  legislation  was,  in  the  early  part  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  conceded  almost  without  restriction 
to  the  Governor  General.  Some  part  of  that  power  is 
still  retained  by  him,  but  most  of  it  has  passed  to  the 
government  at  home,  where  it  is  exercised  by  two  dis- 
tinct authorities,  the  Dutch  legislature  (the  two  Chambers 
and  the  king)  and  the  king  alone,  acting  through  his 
minister.  At  one  time  the  king  was  the  only  source  of 
colonial  legislation  in  the  Netherlands,  and  in  spite  of  the 
great  gain  in  power  by  the  States  General  in  the  latter 
half  of  the  century,  the  king's  minister  is  still  the  most 
influential  organ  of  colonial  government.  The  minister 
owes,  of  course,  a  parliamentary  responsibility  to  the 
Chambers  for  anything  that  is  done  or  left  undone  in 
the  colonies.  In  ordinary  times,  however,  the  Chambers 
seem  to  make  but  slight  use  of  this  opportunity  to  control 
the  course  of  colonial  policy.  The  Chambers  exercise  a 
more  direct  influence  in  certain  matters  of  legislation 
expressly  reserved  for  their  consideration.  Most  of  the 
important  laws,  however,  are  established  by  the  mere  fiat 
of  the  minister  of  the  colonies,  and  with  every  allowance 
for  checks  upon  his  action  he  must  be  regarded  as  the 
most  important  source   of   colonial   policy.     Aside  from 


XII  PROVINCIAL  ADMINISTRATION  411 

his  power  of  legislation  he  appoints  the  colonial  officials 
and  has  other  executive  functions. 

Some  obvious  objections  to  this  system  of  colonial  legis- 
lation, by  which  laws  are  framed  in  a  country  so  far  dis- 
tant from  that  in  which  they  are  to  be  applied,  will  be 
touclied  on  later,  in  describing  the  position  of  the  Gov- 
ernor General.  Reference  need  here  be  made  only  to  the 
evil  of  vesting  the  legislative  power  in  a  single  man,  who 
may  lose  his  position  at  any  time  by  the  changes  in 
political  conditions  at  home,  and  who,  in  fact,  holds  office 
ordinarily  but  a  few  years  or  even  months. ^  The  fre- 
quent changes  of  the  individual  who  serves  as  minister  of 
the  colonies  are  thought  to  detract  from  the  consistency 
of  colonial  policy,  and  proposals  have  been  made  to  sur- 
round the  minister  by  an  advisory  council,  which  would 
still  leave  him  the  right  of  decision,  but  which  would  by 
its  influence  over  him  secure  more  stability  and  continuity 
of  development.^ 

Account  was  given  in  a  previous  chapter  of  the  way  in 
which  the  States  General  secured  a  share  in  colonial  legis- 
lation.     The   constitution   of   1848,  which  gave   to   the 


1  The  list  of  ministers  of  the  colonies,  in  Regeeringsalmanak,  1899, 
1 :  574*,  gives  thirty -six  names  (counting  repetitions  in  different  times)  for 
the  period  of  fifty-six  years,  1842-1897,  and  fourteen  names  for  the 
twenty-one  years,  1877-1897.  In  exceptional  cases  a  minister  has  kept 
his  place  for  three  or  four  years  in  recent  times. 

2  The  project,  as  defended  by  a  distinguished  authority  on  colonial 
affairs,  would  make  the  councillors  honorary  officials,  with  small  salaries, 
chosen  not  only  for  their  special  knowledge  of  Dutch  India,  but  also  for 
their  general  attainments.  See  P.  A.  van  der  Lith,  "  Decentralisatie  in 
Nederlandsch  Indie,"  TNI.,  1889,  18:1:129.  See  also  Heldring,  De 
Gids,  1872,  2:  256,  and  "  Een  woord  over  koloniaal  beheer,"  De  Econo- 
mist, 1872,  2: 1158.  I  do  not  know  that  the  project  has  ever  been  pre- 
sented in  the  form  of  a  law. 


412  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

Dutch  legislature  the  power  to  establish  the  Regeerings- 
Meglement,  or  colonial  constitution,  reserved  to  it  the 
settlement  of  a  few  specific  questions,  and  gave  it  further 
a  vague  right  to  pass  laws  for  the  colonies  as  the  need 
might  appear.  The  right  last  named  has  been  of  slight 
importance.^  In  pursuance  of  a  clause  of  the  colonial 
constitution  the  Dutch  legislature  has  fixed  the  import 
and  export  tariffs  of  the  colonies,  and  it  has  amended  that 
constitution  by  several  laws,  of  which  two  had  consider- 
able significance. 2  Only  in  one  way,  however,  has  the 
Dutch  legislature  exerted  a  constant  and  serious  influence 
in  the  course  of  colonial  affairs ;  the  constitution  of  1848 
reserved  to  it  the  regulation  of  the  colonial  finances,  and 
since  1867  it  has  passed  upon  the  colonial  budget  annually. 
While  there  can  be  no  question  that  the  interest  shown 
by  the  Dutch  legislature  in  colonial  affairs  in  the  decade 
from  1860  to  1870  was  of  benefit  to  Java,  there  is  serious 
doubt  whether  Java  and  the  other  colonies  gain  by  having 
their  fiscal  affairs  brought  before  the  Dutch  parliament 
every  year,  to  be  discussed  and  settled  in  detail.  As 
early  as  1872  it  was  asserted  that  the  liberal  programme, 
renaissance  of  India  through  the  Dutch  parliament,  had 
failed  because  the  parliament  was  unfit  for  the  task  in  its 
lack  of  knoAvledge  and  interest  and  in  the  inefficiency  of 
its  control. 3  Against  one  author  who  maintains  that  the 
intermixture  of  the  home  legislature  in  colonial  affairs  is 

1  See  the  list  of  laws  passed  under  it,  De  Louter,  160.  Counting  as  one 
law  a  series  of  agreements  with  commercial  and  transportation  companies 
the  number  is  but  six,  and  none  of  the  laws  has  any  great  significance, 
except  possibly  the  one  abolishing  slavery. 

2  The  agrarian  law  and  the  law  regulating  the  government  sugar  cul- 
ture, both  passed  in  1870. 

8  Heldring,  "  0ns  Bestuur,"  De  Gids,  1872,  2  :  244. 


XII  PROVINCIAL  ADMINISTRATION  413 

a  benefit  to  Java,^  may  be  put  many  who  regard  the 
present  dependence  of  Java  on  the  legislature  as  an  evil. 
Members  of  the  Dutch  Chambers  are  elected  for  their 
views  on  domestic  questions,  —  religion,  education,  fiscal 
and  social  policy,  —  without  regard  to  their  knowledge  of 
colonial  affairs.  The  number  of  colonial  specialists  in 
parliament  has  decreased,  and  most  of  the  present  mem- 
bers show  little  interest  in  colonial  affairs  ;  the  annual 
debate  on  the  budget  leads  only  to  speech-making,  which 
is  useless  when  it  is  not  harmful,  and  invites  interference 
from  ignorant  men  which  is  likely  to  be  mischievous. ^ 
The  necessity  of  presenting  the  budget  to  the  States  Gen- 
eral forces  the  Indian  officials  to  prepare  their  estimates 
long  before  they  are  to  go  into  effect,  without  knowledge 
of  the  changes  that  will  be  made  in  the  intervening  period 
by  the  government  in  the  Netherlands.  The  strict  cen- 
tralization of  the  Dutch  Indian  government  brings  into 
the  budget  items  of  purely  local  interest,  and  matters  of 
urgent  local  importance  are  made  dependent  on  the  whims 
or  prejudices  of  Dutch  legislators.^ 

1  Kock,  "Twee  stelsels,"  De  Gids,  1888,  2:471,  asserts  that  Dutch 
India  is  better  off  than  British  India  because  the  Dutch  parliament  plays 
a  more  direct  part  in  colonial  affairs  than  the  British. 

2  Cf.  J.  P.  Th.  van  Nunen,  "Jets  over  den  toestand  der  Indische  finan- 
cien,"  Ind.  Gids,  1897,  1 :  338  ;  "  De  Indische  begrooting  voor  1897  in  de 
Eerste  Kamer,"  TNI.,  1897,  2d  new  series,  1 :  157  ff.  ;  S[andick]  in 
Ind.  Gids,  1899,  1:  385.  Van  Kesteren,  "De  tegenwoordige  verhouding 
tusschen  Gouverneur-Generaal  en  opperbestuur,"  Ind.  Gids,  1879,  2 :  38, 
quotes  an  Indian  official  who,  when  asked  what  he  thought  of  the  freedom 
of  the  press,  said  he  thought  it  was  not  dangerous  as  long  as  the  press  did 
not  print  what  was  said  about  India  in  the  Dutch  Chambers. 

3Cf.  Kesteren,  Ind.  Gids,  1879,  2:46;  Huijser,  "  Decentralisatie," 
Ind.  Gids,  1888,  2:  1842;  Van  der  Lith,  "Decentralisatie,"  TNI.,  1889, 
18  : 1 :  134  ff.  For  a  more  detailed  description  of  the  method  of  making 
the  budget,  see  Pub.  Am.  Ec.  Ass.,  August,  1900,  483. 


414  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

The  most  reasonable  plan  for  doing  away  with  the 
present  evils  is  one,  to  be  described  later,  for  the  estab- 
lishment of  local  governments  in  Dutch  India,  with 
budgets  of  their  own.  Proposals  have  been  made,  also, 
to  remedy  the  diificulty  by  giving  more  of  a  colonial 
character  to  the  Dutch  parliament.  These  proposals  have 
taken  several  different  shapes :  the  establishment  of  a 
special  "  imperial  "  parliament,  or  the  introduction  of 
representatives  from  the  colonies  into  the  present  Dutch 
Chambers  for  participation  in  all  or  in  purely  colonial 
questions.  In  no  shape,  however,  have  the  proposals  been 
free  from  serious  objections,  both  theoretical  and  prac- 
tical, and  there  seems  little  chance  that  any  of  them  will 
ever  be  realized.^ 

Passing  to  the  Dutch  government  in  India,  and  taking 
up  first  the  centre  of  that  government  at  Batavia,  tlie 
most  striking  characteristic  is  the  immense  concentration 
of  power  in  the  Governor  General,  who  in  his  sole  person 
represents  the  royal  authority,  and  who  is  responsible  for 
the  conduct  of  all  affairs.  Both  in  legislation  and  in 
administration  he  is  without  rival  and  with  few  checks 
in  India  ;  the  only  serious  limitation  on  his  power  is  that 
imposed  by  the  government  in  the  Netherlands. 

The  restriction  on  his  freedom  of  action  comes  not 
from  the  colonial  constitution  of  1854,  which  vests  in  him 
all  surplus  of  authority  not  exercised  by  the  organs  of  the 
home  government,  but  from  the  growing  tendency  of  the 
home  government  to  eat  up  this  surplus  and  assume  new 
functions  to  itself.     The  establishment  of   regular  com- 

1  See  for  a  criticism  of  these  projects  Heldring,  De  Gids,  1872, 
2  :  244  ff. ;  J.  G.  Schot,  "  Eenige  Nederlaudsch-Indisclie  belangen," 
Ind.  Gids,  1890,  2  :  1629  ;  Lith,  TNI.,  1889,  18  :  1  :  118  ff. 


XII  PROVINCIAL  ADMINISTRATION  415 

munication,  by  steam  navigation  and  by  the  telegraphic 
cable,  has  bound  the  Indian  government  to  the  Dutch 
more  closely  than  any  written  instructions  or  special 
officials  such  as  the  old  Commissioners  General  could  do, 
while  the  restless  inquisitiveness  of  the  States  General 
has  led  to  the  bond  being  drawn  constantly  tighter. 
Outside  the  sphere  assumed  by  the  Dutch  legislature  and 
the  minister  of  the  colonies  the  Governor  General  may 
still  make  general  laws ;  in  cases  of  exceptional  urgency 
he  may  even  suspend  the  laws  of  his  superiors  for  a  time. 
These  rights  have,  however,  but  little  meaning  now  that 
the  home  government  can  send  despatches  and  receive 
answers  in  a  few  hours.  The  Governor  General  has  still 
a  most  important  position  in  India,  and  his  advice  is  cer- 
tain to  be  of  influence  in  determining  Dutch  policy,  but 
he  has  lost,  apparently  forever,  the  right  to  choose  his 
own  course  in  the  serious  questions  of  government.^ 

Beside  the  Governor  General  stands  a  council  composed 
of  five  members;  to  insure  its  independence  the  members 
are  appointed  by  the  home  government,  and  may  hold  no 
other  salaried  office.  This  council  is  designed  to  assist 
the  Governor  General  in  the  function  of  legislation,  and  he 
is  bound  to  lay  before  it  all  projects  of  laws.     In  case  the 

1  As  far  back  as  1879  a  Dutch  writer  complained  that  if  the  Governor 
General  wanted  the  police  to  carry  sidearms,  he  had  first  to  ask  permission 
from  The  Hague  !  See  Van  Kesteren,  "  Tegenwoordige  verhouding," 
Ind.  Gids,  1879,  2  :  56.  The  same  writer  asserted  that  the  serious  war 
with  Atjeh  was  brought  on  by  the  minister  of  the  colonies  ;  the  Governor 
General  simply  followed  the  instructions  sent  him,  ih.,  p.  65.  De  Louter 
notes  this  growing  dependence  of  the  Indian  government,  and  quotes  the 
advice  given  by  a  former  Governor  General  to  the  minister  of  the  colonies, 
in  a  speech  in  the  First  Chamber  in  1894 :  "  Do  not  write  too  many  letters 
to  the  Governor  General,  and  do  not  let  those  from  the  Governor  General 
lie  waiting  too  long  on  your  desk,"  Handleiding,  165. 


416  THE   DUTCH   IN  JAVA  chap. 

majority  of  the  council  is  opposed  to  a  project  he  may 
still,  however,  enforce  it  as  law  until  a  decision  has  been 
received  from  the  government  in  the  Netherlands. ^ 

In  a  few  exceptional  cases  the  Governor  General  is 
obliged  in  administrative  matters  to  gain  the  consent  of 
the  Council  for  his  action ;  in  other  cases  he  is  obliged  to 
seek  its  advice.  In  general,  however,  he  is  perfectly  inde- 
pendent in  administration,  and  is  the  only  responsible 
official  in  that  branch  of  government,  as  he  is  in  legisla- 
tion. The  administration  is  divided,  for  the  more  efficient 
conduct  of  business,  into  five  departments,^  but  the  heads 
of  these  departments  lack  the  independence  and  the  pecul- 
iar responsibility  of  the  ministers  in  a  parliamentary  gov- 
ernment. They  are  ordinary  officials,  who  are  appointed 
by  the  Governor  General  and  are  directly  subordinate  to 
him.  Though  they  necessarily  have  many  dealings  with 
the  heads  of  the  provincial  government,  the  latter  are 
responsible,  not  to  them,  but  to  the  Governor  General,  in 
whom  everything  centres. 

Without  going  further  into  the  details  of  organization 
it  will  be  apparent  that  the  Governor  General  has  imposed 
upon  him  a  mass  of  duties  which  one  man  can  scarcely 
oversee.  Peculiar  importance  attaches,  therefore,  to  the 
General  Secretariat,  the  clerical  force  which  has  grown  up 
about  the  person  of  the  chief  ruler  to  assist  him  in  fulfil- 
ling his  many  obligations.     The  Secretariat  conducts  the 

1  Since  the  institution  of  the  Council,  in  1854,  there  have  been  only  three 
cases  in  which  it  failed  to  reach  an  agreement  with  the  Governor  General. 
In  two  of  these  cases  the  Governor  General  carried  the  law  into  execution, 
and  had  his  action  confirmed  by  the  minister.  The  Council  has  the  right 
of  initiative,  but  makes  little  or  no  use  of  it.     See  De  Louter,  178  ff. 

2  Adding  the  central  government,  the  army,  and  the  navy,  we  have  the 
eight  divisions  of  the  budget  of  expenditures. 


xn  PROVINCIAL  ADMINISTRATION  417 

correspondence  and  edits  the  orders  of  the  central  govern- 
ment in  India.  This  institution  occupies  in  form  a  humble 
place,  but  in  fact  plays  an  important  part  in  government ; 
its  members  are  not  mere  mechanical  links  between  the 
Governor  General  and  his  various  officials,  but  are  inde- 
pendent agents,  giving  not  only  form  but  substance  to  the 
expressions  of  the  government's  will. 

In  this  summary  sketch  of  the  Dutch  Indian  government 
I  have  reached  finally  the  last  of  the  parts  into  which,  for 
convenience  of  description,  I  divided  it  —  the  provincial 
administration.  As  it  is  idle  to  argue  about  the  relative 
importance  of  the  head  and  the  members  in  the  human 
body,  so  it  is  impossible  to  say  that  one  part  of  a  govern- 
ment is  more  necessary  than  another.  This,  however, 
may  at  least  be  said  with  confidence,  that  the  provincial 
administration  in  Java  is  that  part  of  the  government 
which  in  its  development  has  imposed  the  greatest  diffi- 
culties and  demanded  the  greatest  pains.  The  Dutch 
employed  in  the  central  government,  whether  at  The 
Hague  or  in  Batavia,  do  work  that  is  typically  European. 
The  arithmetic  of  their  politics  does  not  differ  greatly 
from  that  which  they  would  employ  in  the  Netherlands. 

Only  in  the  provinces  do  the  Dutch  face  fully  the 
problem  of  their  government  in  the  East :  the  control  of 
a  great  social  and  political  organization,  instinct  with 
a  vitality  of  its  own,  and  working  in  ways  which  have 
passed  out  of  the  memory  of  Europe  for  centuries.  The 
provincial  officials  bind  together  different  ages  of  the 
world's  history.  If  they  would  succeed  in  their  task,  they 
must  remain  European  and  yet  become  native.  Only 
they  can  interpret  the  two  peoples,  Dutch  and  Javanese, 
to  each  other  ;  transform  the  petty  native  problems  into 
2b 


418 


THE  DUTCH  IN  JAVA 


terms  intelligible  to  European  legislators;  and,  again, 
transform  European  laws  for  practical  application  to 
native  conditions. 

The  system  of  provincial  administration  appears  in  the 
following  table,  which  gives  the  various  titles  (those  of 
native  officials  in  italics),  and  which  marks  by  the  num- 
ber and  salary  the  relative  importance  and  place  in  the 
hierarchy :  i  — 


Title 

NUMIiER 

Salary 

Resident 

22 

fl.  15,000 

Assistant  Resident 

78 

7,200 

Controleur     . 

165 

First  class  . 

47 

4,800 

Second  class 

68 

3,600 

Aspirant     . 

50 

2,700 

Regent   . 

. 

72 

12,000 

District  Heads 

. 

434 

2,500 

Under  District  Heads 

1,033 

First  class  . 

357 

1,200 

Second  class 

676 

780 

The  resident  represents  the  authority  of  the  Governor 
General  in  the  province  of  his  activities,  an  area  roughly 
comparable  to  that  of  a  county  in  one  of  the  northeastern 

1 1  have  compiled  these  figures  for  the  administration  in  Java  from  the 
estimates  of  expenditures,  "Begrooting  van  Nederlandsch-Indie  voor  het 
dienstjaar  1900,"  Afdeeling  IV.  As  salaries  vary  sometimes  for  officials  of 
the  same  title,  the  figures  for  salaries  must  be  regarded  merely  as  illustra- 
tions, not  far  from  the  average.  Some  residents,  for  instance,  get  fl.  12,000 
and  some  fl.  18,000  ;  district  heads  get  fl.  2400  or  fl.  2700. 

I  have  found  two  articles  especially  useful  for  the  following  description 
of  the  provincial  administration:  "Over  het  binnenlandsch  bestuur  op 
Java  en  Madoera,"  Ind.  Gids,  1897,  1:743-791;  and  C.  J.  Hasselman, 
"  Lotsverbetering  voor  de  ambtenaren  bij  het  binnenlandsch  bestuur  in 
Nederlandsch-Indie,"  ib.,  1898,  2  :  1158-1200. 


XII  PROVINCIAL  ADMINISTRATION  419 

States  of  America.  A  French  author  finds  only  one  offi- 
cial, the  French  prefect,  comparable  to  him  in  the  multi- 
plicity of  his  duties.^  He  combines  administrative,  minor 
legislative,  judicial,  and  fiscal  functions,  and  has  still  in 
some  cases  political  or  diplomatic  responsibilities.  He  is 
under  certain  specific  obligations :  to  protect  the  natives 
from  all  oppression,  to  maintain  peace,  to  further  agricul- 
ture and  education,  to  guard  religion,  and  to  extend  the 
amount  known  of  his  residency ;  but  a  complete  catalogue 
of  his  activities  would  run  to  an  indefinite  length. 

Though  the  number  of  residents  has  greatly  increased 
in  the  course  of  the  nineteenth  century,  each  has  still,  on 
the  average,  about  a  million  people  subject  to  him,  and  it 
would  evidently  be  impossible  for  him  to  fulfil  his  duties 
to  them,  in  any  detail.  He  has  helpers,  therefore,  the 
assistant  residents,  who  exercise  all  his  functions  except 
that  of  legislation,  and  who  relieve  him  of  the  administra- 
tive work  in  the  subdivisions  of  the  residency.  These 
subdivisions  correspond  generally  with  the  regencies,  and 
the  assistant  residents  have  come  to  be  the  regular  agents 
for  dealing  with  the  highest  native  officials,  the  regents. 
Assistants  are  in  theory  subordinate  to  the  resident,  but 
in  practice  are  forced  by  the  amount  of  business  to  act  in 
most  cases  independently  of  him. 

The  last  in  the  series  of  European  officials,  the  con- 
troleurs,  have  been  called  the  "  nerves  and  sinews  "  of  the 
administration  ;  they  are  supposed  to  collect  information 
and  to  execute  commands  for  their  superiors  without  in- 
dependent authority.  The  theory,  however,  which  would 
make  them  mere  instruments,  through  whom  the  residents 
and  their  assistants  would  govern,  has  not  been  realized. 
1  Chailley-Bert,  Java,  178. 


420  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

Under  the  conditions  of  government  in  the  East,  authority 
tends  to  run  down  the  series  of  European  officials  to  those 
who  are  closest  to  the  natives.  The  controleurs  are  in 
daily  touch  with  the  native  officials,  and  this  position 
gives  them  an  authority  which  no  law  can  take  away  ; 
they  are  the  most  competent  to  settle  the  petty  local 
questions  which  form  so  important  a  part  of  the  business 
of  government,  and  exercise  a  most  important  influence 
on  the  conduct  of  affairs. 

It  is  a  principle  of  government,  expressly  recognized  in 
the  colonial  constitution,  that  the  natives  shall  be  left,  so 
far  as  circumstances  permit,  under  the  immediate  rule  of 
their  own  heads.  Each  residency  in  Java  and  Madoera 
consists,  as  a  rule,  of  one  or  more  regencies,  under  natives 
of  noble  or  princely  rank,  who  are  made  responsible  for 
the  conduct  of  their  subjects.  The  Governor  General, 
who  appoints  the  regents,  is  bound,  so  far  as  possible,  to 
maintain  their  hereditary  succession,  and  the  government 
seeks  to  gain  from  this  class  of  officials  the  prestige  and 
the  experience  of  the  old  lines  of  native  rulers. 

At  one  time  the  regents  were  all-powerful  in  the  native 
hierarchy,  and  they  are  still  of  influence  as  political  ad- 
visers ;  they  retain  the  dignity  of  their  former  position 
but  they  have  had  to  cede  much  of  its  practical  power  to 
native  subordinates,  the  district  heads,  in  whom  lies  the 
"centre  of  gravity  of  the  administration." ^  These  offi- 
cials, who  far  outnumber  all  others  in  the  provincial  ad- 
ministration, are  appointed  with  the  advice  of  the  regent, 
and  are  supposed  to  receive  their  orders  through  him,  but 
the  extension  of  the  Dutch  organization  has  brought  the 

^  "Zijn  er  op  Java  te  veel  Europeesche  ambtenaren  van  het  binnen- 
landsch  bestuur  ?  "  by  a  controleur,  Ind,  Gids,  1895,  2  :  1113. 


XII  PKOVINCIAL   ADMINISTRATION  421 

lower  Dutch  officials  iuto  close  contact  with  the  district 
heads,  and  made  of  them  agents  closely  subject  to  the 
Dutch  administration.  With  them  the  series  of  govern- 
ment officials  stops.  Below  them  lie  the  village  groups, 
which  the  government  seeks  to  regulate  and  through 
which  it  approaches  the  individual  natives  in  many  cases ; 
village  officials,  however,  receive  no  salaries  from  the 
Dutch,  and  must  still  be  regarded  as  belonging  to  the 
native  organization. 

The  village  officials  have  still  the  important  function  of 
apportioning  the  land-tax.  Aside  from  that  they  exercise 
but  a  slight  influence  on  government  ;  they  are  too  Aveak 
and  ignorant  to  be  much  more  than  tools  of  the  lower 
native  officials.  Yet  the  village  governments  form  the 
only  institution  in  Java  really  representing  the  natives 
and  hence  in  a  position  to  control  the  arbitrary  course  of 
the  Dutch  government.  Except  for  them  there  is  no  reg- 
ular channel  through  which  the  people  can  express  them- 
selves in  politics.  The  administrative  hierarchy  pervades 
every  part  of  the  island  and  covers  every  function  of 
government,  and  from  top  to  bottom  it  runs  unbroken. 
Officials  have  ear  alone  for  the  orders  that  reach  them 
from  their  superiors  ;  all  face  toward  one  point,  the  centre 
of  government  at  Batavia  or  Buitenzorg  or  wherever  the 
Governor  General  may  be. 

The  system  of  autocratic  centralization  is  a  natural 
product  of  the  history  of  the  Dutch  in  Java,  but  it  entails 
obvious  disadvantages.  It  throws  on  the  central  gov- 
ernment an  overwhelming  amount  of  business  and  en- 
courages the  regulation  of  details  by  officials  in  Batavia 
which  might  better  be  left  to  officials  in  the  country 
districts. 


422  THE    DUTCH   IN  JAVA  chap. 

The  evil  of  centralization  appears  particularly  in  the 
apportionment  of  expenditures  in  various  localities.  All 
taxes  flow  to  the  central  treasury,  and  all  payments  are  dis- 
tributed thence.  The  local  officials  send  in  their  demands, 
in  competition  with  each  other,  each  asking  for  more  than 
is  really  necessary,  as  the  burden  of  the  extra  payment 
will  scarcely  be  felt  in  the  locality  in  which  he  is  especially 
interested.  The  central  government  cannot  weigh  the 
justice  of  the  demands,  and  cannot  place  the  resources  of 
the  country  where  they  are  most  needed. ^  Many  duties 
of  government,  of  great  local  importance,  are  left  unful- 
filled, because  their  necessity  is  not  appreciated  at  Batavia, 
and  the  result  is  dissatisfaction  that  may  grow  to  an  open 
breach  between  the  government  and  its  subjects. 

Something  might  be  doner  to  remedy  the  overburdening 
of  the  central  government  by  a  reorganization  of  the  de- 
partments of  administration. 2  A  more  promising  plan  of 
reform  would  attack  the  bureaucracy  more  nearly  at  its 
centre.  A  project  which  was  introduced  in  the  States 
General  in  1893,  but  which  was  dropped  after  the  fall  of 
the  minister  who  supported  it,  sought  to  give  vigor  to  the 
Council  of  India  by  adding  to  it  a  number  of  extraordi- 
nary councillors,  to  be  chosen  at  least  in  part  from  indi- 
viduals in  private  life.^  Any  thoroughgoing  reform  of 
the   central  government  would  have  also  to  restrict  the 

1  See  the  examples  in  0.  M.  de  Munninck,  "  Decentralisatie  in  Ned.- 
Indie,"  De  Gids,  1897,  4  :  135,  138.  A  useless  iron  bridge  is  built  in  one 
place  while  the  city  of  vSoerabaya  is  kept  waiting  for  a  quarter  of  a  cen- 
tury for  the  water  supply  that  is  urgently  needed. 

2  See  Ind.  Gids,  1894,  1  :  689  ff.  ;  and  ih.,  1897,  1 :  459  ff.,  regarding  a 
separate  department  of  administration  for  the  Outer  Possessions. 

8  See  text  and  comment  in  TNI.,  1893,  22:2:391  £f.  ;  ih.  1894, 
23  :  1 :  30  ff.  The  idea  of  a  more  efficient  legislative  council  is  an  old  one  ; 
see  De  Gids,  1872,  2  :  253 ;  De  Economist,  1872,  2 :  1160. 


XII  PROVINCIAL  ADMINISTRATION  •  423 

sphere  of  the  Secretariat,  and  to  provide  for  more  efficient 
cooperation  between  the  Governor  General  and  the  heads 
of  departments  of  administration,  who  are  now  too  closely 
subject  to  him. 

To  reach  the  root  of  the  evil,  however,  changes  in  the 
local  as  well  as  in  the  central  government  will  be  neces- 
sary. In  recent  years  there  has  been  a  growing  demand 
for  some  means  by  which  the  inhabitants  of  the  various 
localities  of  Java,  especially  those  living  in  large  cities, 
might  influence  the  conduct  of  affairs.  There  is  no 
thought  of  granting  suffrage  and  representation  to  the 
mass  of  the  natives,  who  are,  by  general  agreement, 
entirely  unfit  to  exercise  political  rights  outside  their 
villages.  The  demands  for  a  more  liberal  system  have 
come  not  from  them  but  from  European  settlers,  and  in 
their  favor  there  is  likely  to  be  some  departure  from 
the  present  autocratic  centralization.  To  show  the 
tendency  of  the  movement  I  describe  the  changes 
proposed  by  one  of  the  Dutch  authorities  on  colonial 
government. 

Provincial  councils  should  be  established,  to  be  at  first 
merely  advisory,  leaving  the  authority  still  with  the 
resident;  they  should  be  composed  of  European  officials, 
of  native  officials  of  the  highest  rank,  and  of  private  indi- 
viduals, both  European  and  native,  designated  by  the 
Governor  General.  The  proposed  local  governments 
should  occupy  themselves  especially  with  matters  con- 
cerning public  works,  agriculture,  and  industry,  and 
should  be  granted  about  one-third  of  the  present  public 
revenues  for  their  local  budgets. ^     Modest  as  these  pro- 

iDe  Louter,  "Decentr.,"  Ind.  Gids,  1888,  2:  1596  ff.  Even  in  the 
middle  of  the  century  the  question  of  independent  municipal  institutions 


424  THE   DUTCH   IN  JAVA  chap. 

posals  seem,  it  was  not  until  1893  that  attempt  was  made 
to  prepare  the  way  for  their  realization,  and  the  necessary 
amendment  to  the  colonial  constitution  was  not  carried  at 
that  time. 

Not  only  the  theory  of  autocratic  centralization,  on 
which  the  provincial  administration  rests,  has  been  criti- 
cised ;  officials  of  the  administration  have  been  charged, 
even  in  recent  times,  with  neglect  of  their  duties  or  per- 
version of  their  powers.  It  is  an  immensely  difficult  task 
to  build  up  an  administration  _^of  this  peculiar  kind,  that 
shall  work  properly  even  in  the  absence  of  a  controlling 
public  opinion,  and  it  is  a  task  which  the  Dutch  have  not 
yet  fulfilled.  Administrative  officials  are  charged  not 
only  with  indolence  and  apathy,  but  also  with  a  direct 
disregard  of  instructions,  with  occasional  dishonesty,  and 
with  many  misdeeds  which  could  not  be  brought  before 
a  criminal  court,  but  which  still  are  harmful  and  are 
forbidden.  In  spite  of  precautions  there  have  been  a 
number  of  cases  of  shortage  in  the  accounts,  and  officials 
make  improper  gains  in  many  ways,  receiving  presents 
from  their  subjects,  and  misusing  their  influence  in 
auctions  and  notarial  affairs. ^     One  of  the  old  faults  of 

was  mooted,  as  can  be  learned  from  the  article  in  TNI.,  1862,  24 : 1  :  341  ff. 
A  commission  gave  an  adverse  report  on  it  in  1878,  printed  Ind.  Gids, 
1899,  2  :  1309  ff.,  and  since  then  the  subject  has  been  discussed  in  numer- 
ous articles.     See  for  further  references  Encyc.  NL,  1  :  429. 

2  These  facts  appear  in  a  book,  "  Macht  tegen  recht,"  by  M.  C.  Piepers, 
formerly  advocate  general,  published  at  Batavia  in  1884.  I  have  not 
seen  the  original,  but  there  are  full  summaries  of  it  in  Ind.  Gids,  1884, 
2  :  701  ff.  ;  TNI.,  1884,  13  :  2  :  401  ff.  ;  and  De  Gids,  1885,  3  :  113  ff.  See 
also  Vellema,  "  Pandjeshuizen,"  Ind.  Gids,  189-3,  2  :  1590,  and  Hasselman, 
"Lotsverbetering,"  Ind.  Gids,  1898,  2:  1169  ff.,  with  further  references. 

Piepers  wrote  his  book  as  a  protest  against  the  misuse  of  judicial  func- 
tions by  the  residents.  The  conflict  between  the  provincial  administra- 
tion and  the  judiciary  has  been  a  serious  question  in  India,  and  has  roused 


XII  PROVINCIAL   ADMINISTRATION  425 

the  provincial  officials,  the  misuse  of  natives  for  personal 
and  domestic  service,  has  persisted,  and  called  forth  an 
admonitory  circular  from  the  central  government  in 
1895.1  The  keeping  of  native  concubines  by  unmarried 
officials  is  general,  and  in  spite  of  resulting  abuses  is 
openly  permitted  by  the  government.  The  institution  is, 
in  fact,  so  thoroughly  established  that  a  man  of  rank 
and  consideration  in  the  world  of  Indian  officials  could 
publish  recently  an  article  in  which  he  discussed  the 
relative  advantage  to  a  young  official  of  marrying  a 
European  or  keeping  a  native  mistress,  and  reached  the 
conclusion  that  either  course  had  its  good  and  bad  sides, 
and  the  choice  was  about  equal  between  them,^ 

Faults  in  the  personnel  of  the  European  administration 
appear  more  serious  when  one  considers  how  certain  they 
are  to  be  intensified  in  the  native  officials,  who  form  so 
important  a  part  of  the  government.  In  spite  of  the 
good  work  that  has  been  done  by  the  schools  for  native 
officials,  they  are  still  unable  to  meet  the  calls  upon  them, 
and  many  natives  are  appointed,  even  to  the  highest  posi- 
tions, without  having  been  through  these  schools.  At 
best  the  faults  of  native  character  would  disappear  but 
slowly,  as  new  intellectual  and  moral  standards  grew  up 
in  native  society,  and  under  present  conditions  there  must 
be  many  officials  in  the  government's  service  who  are  as 

much  discussion,  but  it  seems  unnecessary  to  pursue  the  subject  further 
here. 

1  "  Eene  nieuwe  schrede  op  den  goeden  weg?"  Ind.  Gids,  1895, 
2:1101  ff.  Natives  under  judicial  sentence  were  used  for  bath  and 
kitchen  attendants,  gardeners,  and  stable  boys. 

2  See  Adelante,  "  Concubinaat  bij  de  ambtenaren  van  het  binnen- 
landsch  bestuur  in  Nederlandsch-Indie,"  TNI.,  2d  new  series,  1898, 
2:304  ff.  See  further,  Schot,  "Ned.  Ind.  belangen,"  Ind.  Gids,  1890, 
2  :  1632-1636  ;  "  Huwelijken  in  Indie,"  Ind.  Gids,  1803,  1 :  385-390. 


426  THE  DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

ready  to  take  advantage  of  opportunities  for  abuse  as  were 
their  predecessors  in  the  time  of  the  East  India  Company. 
The  old  evils  of  native  government  still  crop  up,  as 
that,  for  instance,  of  family  rings,  which  still  control 
the  administration  of  many  districts  in  Java.^  Native 
officials  show  characteristic  weaknesses  not  only  as  ad- 
ministrators, but  also  in  their  functions  as  advisers  to  the 
responsible  European  officials ;  they  lack  independence 
and  seek  to  comply  with  the  preferences  or  the  preju- 
dices of  their  Dutch  superiors  instead  of  advocating  the 
course  which  at  heart  they  believe  to  be  the  wisest. 

Cooperation  between  Dutch  and  native  officials  is  the 
keystone  of  the  government  of  Java,  and  when  one  party 
to  the  work  is  as  weak  as  are  necessarily  the  natives,  very 
rare  qualities  are  needed  in  the  Dutch  officials  who  share 
with  them  the  government.  These  officials  need  to  be 
not  alone  men  of  intellectual  power,  trained  in  the  difficult 
subjects  of  social  and  political  organization  in  the  East  ; 
they  must  have  the  capacity  for  influencing  and  elevating 
men  of  an  inferior  civilization,  for  which  sound  moral 
standards  are  indispensably  necessary.  A  certain  school 
of  writers  on  tropical  dependencies  emphasize  the  value 
of  imposing  authority  and  reserve,  in  the  attitude  of 
Europeans  to  natives  ;  they  tend  to  base  government  on 
terrorism. 2  Granting  a  certain  amount  of  truth  in  this, 
so  far  as  concerns  the  relations  between  government  and 

1  See  "De  outwikkeling  van  de  inlandsche  hoofden  op  Java,"  Ind. 
Gids,  1892,  1  :  684. 

2  Cf.  Pfeil,  "  Sudsee,"  256.  He  advocates  strictness  rather  than  leniency, 
reserve  rather  than  any  confidential  and  familiar  relation.  "  Strenge 
bewirkt  Furcht,  Gerechtigkeit  erzwingt  Achtung,  oder,  soweit  dies  bei  den 
Farbigen  moglich  ist,  Liebe.  Furcht  und  Liebe  sind  aber  noch  stets  die 
besten  Erziehungsmittel  gewesen  und  werden  es  bleiben,  aber  die  Furcht 
steht  voran." 


XII  PKOVINCIAL  ADMINISTRATiUN  427 

governed,  it  has  certainly  less  application  to  relations 
between  the  two  races  when  both  share  the  responsibility 
of  government.  The  Dutch  have  had  sufficient  experience 
with  this  question  to  give  decided  value  to  their  conclu- 
sions, and  they  have  tended  constantly  in  their  recent 
history  to  further  close  and  confidential  relations  between 
the  European  and  native  officials.  To  this  tendency  a 
recent  observer  ascribes  a  large  share  of  their  success  in 
government.-^ 

In  this,  however,  as  in  other  points,  the  administration 
is  still  far  from  having  reached  the  ideal  of  perfection. 
While  in  some  cases  extremely  happy  relations  exist  be- 
tween the  Dutch  officials  and  their  native  associates,  there 
is  complaint  that  in  all  ranks  of  officials  there  are  examples 
of  a  mistaken  treatment  of  the  natives  by  the  Dutch. 
Regents  are  offended  by  a  disregard  of  etiquette,  and  lower 
officials  are  ordered  about  like  servants,  with  scoldings 
and  curses.2  It  is  asserted,  apparently  with  justice,  that 
Europeans  overestimate  their  own  knowledge,  that  they 
are  too  vain  to  acknowledge  a  dependence  on  natives, 
and  that  they  secure  much  less  help  from  the  natives  than 
they  could  get  by  approaching  them  in  a  different  spirit.^ 

Conservation  of  energy  in  the  government  and  admin- 
istration is  of  the  utmost  importance  if  the  Dutch  are  to 
accomplish  all  the  tasks  which  they  have  taken  up  in  Java, 
and  no  means  looking  to  that  end  appears  to  promise  more 
than  an  improvement  in  the  quality  of  the  European 
officials  in  the  provincial  administration.  Such  an  im- 
provement would  be  reflected  in  the  tone  of  the  native 

1  Chailley-Bert,  Java,  183. 

2  "Xota  betreffeiide  de  verhouding  tusschen  het  Europeesch  eu  het 
inlandsch  bestuur  op  Java  en  Madoera,  door  een  regent,"  Ind.  Gids,  1889, 
2  :  1521  ff.  2  cf.  "  Zijn  er,  enz.,"  Ind.  Gids,  1895,  2  :  1114. 


42a  THE  DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

officials,  and  would  facilitate  that  collaboration  of  the  two 
branches  of  the  administrative  service  on  which  so  much 
depends. 

To  secure  the  proper  training  and  character  in  their 
provincial  administration  the  Dutch  have  a  system  of 
education  and  selection  which  has  been  in  trial  for  many- 
years,  and  which  is  still  undergoing  revision  to  suit  it  to 
its  purposes. 1  Another  means  to  the  desired  end  is  an 
improvement  in  the  conditions  of  pay  and  promotion 
which  will  make  the  career  of  the  provincial  official 
attractive  to  first-class  men. 

The  career  of  an  official  in  the  provincial  administration 
was  sketched  as  follows  by  a  recent  writer.^  He  goes 
to  India  soon  after  reaching  his  majority  and  is  set  at 
work  provisionally  for  two  years  on  a  salary  of  fl.l50  a 
month.  He  is  then  made  aspirant-controleur  at  fl.  225, 
is  advanced  after  three  or  four  years  to  the  position  of 
controleur  of  the  second  class  at  fl.  300,  and  after  six  years 
more  of  service  reaches  the  first  class  with  a  salary  of 
fl.  400.  Six  years  later  he  becomes  assistant  resident  at  a 
salary  of  fl.  600,  which  may  be  raised,  by  periodic  increases, 
again  after  six  years,  to  fl.  600.      The  majority  of  officials 

1  On  this  topic  see  Lowell,  and  for  examples  of  recent  criticism  by 
Dutch  authorities,  A.  J.  Immink,  "  De  opleiding  der  Oost-Indische 
administratieve  ambtenaren,"  De  Gids,  1899,  2:  157-190;  C.  J.  Hassel- 
man,  "De  opleiding  der  Europeesche  ambtenaren  bij  het  Binnenlandsche 
Bestuur  in  Nederlandsch-Indie,"  Ind.  Gids,  1899,  1 :  300-328.  There 
seems  to  be  general  agreement  in  India  that  the  present  system  is  not  up 
to  the  demands  or  the  possibilities,  and  there  is  frequent  comparison  with 
the  English  system  to  the  advantage  of  the  latter. 

2Hasselman,  "Lotsverbetering,"  Ind.  Gids,  1898,  2:1178  fi.  The 
figures  of  salaries  do  not  include  the  allowances  for  travelling  expenses, 
etc.,  which  are  said  to  be  about  sufficient  for  the  actual  needs.  It  should 
be  noted  that  a  residence  is  provided  gratuitously  for  officials  of  the  rank 
of  controleur  and  above. 


XII  PROVINCIAL  ADMINISTRATION  429 

in  the  provincial  administration  reach  no  higher  rank  than 
this  ;  about  one-third  of  the  officials  become  full  residents, 
after  nearly  thirty  years  of  service,  and  enjoy  a  salary  of 
fl.l250  a  month.  Regulations  provide  that  an  official 
who  has  served  twenty  years,  and  has  reached  the  age  of 
forty-jfive,  may  retire  on  a  pension  which  amounts  to  one- 
quarter  of  the  highest  salary  which  he  has  received.  ^ 

While  the  salaries  of  officials  in  the  highest  positions  in 
Dutch  India  are  very  generous,  these  sums  cited  are  cer- 
tainly not  commensurate  with  the  importance  of  the  work 
that  is  done  by  members  of  the  provincial  administration 
or  with  the  demands  upon  their  qualities  as  individuals. 
The  government  may  plead  the  fact  that  it  is  compelled 
by  the  exigencies  of  tropical  service  often  to  maintain 
several  dependents  for  the  same  office  —  perhaps  one  as- 
pirant learning  the  duties,  one  in  active  service,  one  on 
leave  and  one  pensioned.  The  fact  remains  that  the 
average  official  in  the  provincial  administration  cannot 
meet  the  demands  of  his  life  in  India  and  live  up  to  his 
position  afterwards  in  the  Netherlands  on  the  pay  which 
the  government  gives  him.  The  position  of  officials  has 
grown  steadily  worse  in  the  last  twenty  years,  measuring 
the  needs  by  the  means  given  to  meet  them,  and  is  much 
worse  in  Dutch  India  than  in  British  India. ^ 

1  For  details  of  the  regulations  concerning  salary,  leave,  and  pensions 
the  reader  is  referred  to  De  Louter,  240  ff.,  or  to  Encyc.  NT.,  1 :  27  ff., 
article  "  Ambtenaar." 

2  See  for  points  cited  in  the  text  and  for  further  details  Van  K[esteren  ?], 
"  Moet  de  positie  der  Indische  ambtenaren  verbeterd  worden?"  Ind. 
Gids,  1884,  2  :  219  ff.  ;  "  Engelsch-Indische  bestuursambtenaren  en  Ned- 
erlandsch-Indische  Collega's,"  ib.,  1893,  2:1905ff.  ;  Van  S[andick?], 
"  Grieven  en  wenschen  van  ambtenaren  bij  het  binnenlandsch  bestuur," 
ib..  1898,  1  :  401  ff.  ;  J.  P.  Th.  van  Nunen,  "Jets  over  de  bezoldigingen  en 
pensioenen  der  burgelijke  ambtenaren  in  Indie,"  ib.,  1896,  2  :  1676  ff. 


430  THE   DUTCH  IN  JAVA  chap. 

The  discontent  among  officials  in  the  provincial  admin- 
istration rises  not  only  from  the  small  salaries  attached 
to  all  positions  except  the  highest,  but  also  from  the  slow- 
ness of  promotion.  The  controleur  is  described  as  leading 
a  dog's  life.  He  is  overburdened  with  duties,  is  made 
responsible  for  everything  that  goes  wrong,  and  is  at- 
tacked from  all  sides.  Dutch  planters  charge  him  with 
lack  of  zeal  in  furthering  their  enterprises,  while  the 
regent  and  native  heads  assert  that  he  is  unduly  harsh 
to  the  people,  and  the  resident  complains  of  his  weakness 
in  not  reconciling  the  different  parties.  The  position 
of  the  assistant  resident  is  little  better  :  he  does  the 
work  of  his  superior  without  having  his  pay  or  his  posi- 
tion. Yet  most  members  of  the  provincial  adminis- 
tration spend  their  lives  in  these  lower  positions.  They 
find  themselves  at  every  stage  worse  off  than  their  asso- 
ciates in  the  judicial  department,  or  in  the  technical 
branches  of  administration — public  works,  forestry,  and 
education.  They  see  themselves  passed  by  all.  While 
they  are  plodding  along  in  the  hope  of  securing  ulti- 
mately a  competence,  they  see  contemporaries,  who  began 
their  career  at  Batavia  in  one  of  the  departments  or  in 
the  General  Secretariat,  and  who  thus  became  known  to 
the  members  of  the  central  government,  given  the  great 
prizes  of  office. 

It  is  asserted,  moreover,  that  nepotism  and  favoritism 
still  play  a  part  in  the  promotion  of  officials.  ^  Men  who 
are  proverbially  indolent  and  incompetent  are  retained  in 
the  service  and  are  advanced  in  rank,  whether  it  be 
through  personal  influence  or  from  a  dislike  to  break 
their  careers.     The   tolerance  of  poor  officials  must   be 

1  "Eng.  Ind.  bestuur,"  Ind.  Gids,  1893,  2: 1917  ff. 


XII  PROVINCIAL  ADMINISTRATION  431 

far  from  exceptional,  for  it  has  gained  for  itself  a  name, 
"  sympathy-system  "  {Kasaian-stelseV). 

The  conditions  of  service  in  the  provincial  administra- 
tion have  formed  a  grievance  so  long  that  they  have  been 
forced  on  the  attention  of  the  central  government  and 
of  the  Dutch  legislature  ;  minor  reforms  have  been 
effected  and  changes  reaching  further  are  likely  to  fol- 
low. It  seems  generally  admitted  that  the  position  of 
the  controleur  should  be  improved  to  accord  with  the 
importance  of  his  functions,  and  that  the  office  of  assist- 
ant resident  should  be  modified  so  that  it  can  fairly  be 
made  the  goal  in  the  career  of  most  of  the  provincial 
officials.  One  project  would  abolish  the  residencies  en- 
tirely, and  raise  to  their  place  the  smaller  administrative 
divisions  among  which  the  serious  work  of  government 
has  been  divided.^ 

After  this  description  of  the  organization  and  workings 
of  the  Dutch  government  in  Java,  the  reader  might  expect 
a  summary  appreciation  of  its  efficiency.  I  have  offered 
material  for  such  an  appreciation  in  the  chapters  describ- 
ing the  recent  policy  in  various  lines,  but  hesitate  to 
generalize  for  lack  of  personal  observation  and  of  the  com- 
parative studies  on  which  a  general  judgment  should  be 
founded.  It  is  possible  to  learn  from  Dutch  Indian  litera- 
ture what  the  Dutch  have  tried  to  do,  in  what  measure 
they  have  succeeded,  and,  to  some  extent,  what  have  been 
the  causes  of  their  failures.  It  is  difficult  to  say  what 
would  have  been  the  result  if  they  had  followed  a  differ- 
ent course  from  that  which  they  have  pursued,  and  it  is 
impossible  for  me  to  say  how  much  better  or  worse 
another  people   (the   English,  for  example)  would  have 

1  "  Over  het  binnenlandsch  bestuiir,"  Iiid.  Gids,  1897,  1  :  753,  764  ff. 


^^2  THE  DUTCH   IN  JAVA  chap,  xii 

done  in  their  place.  With  all  the  points  of  likeness  that 
invite  comparison  between  Dutch  and  British  India  there 
are  differences  so  great  that  the  comparison  should  be  at- 
tempted only  by  those  who  are  thoroughly  at  home  in 
both  fields  of  government,  and  who  are  willing  to  under- 
take elaborate  investigations  on  which  to  base  their 
conclusions: 


INDEX 


Adat,  native  custom,  120. 

Admodatie-stelsel,  higgling  in  land- 
tax,  405. 

Ageng,  native  monarch,  16. 

Amangkoe-Rat,  native  monarch,  16. 

Amboyna  massacre,  54. 

American  commercial  competition, 
190,  238. 

Amptgeld,  tax  on  salaries,  103. 

Atjeh,  384. 

Bantam,  44  ff. 

Batavia  founded,  43. 

Baud,  J.  C,  247,  276,  288,  292. 

Bekel,  village  official,  32. 

Blandong  districts,  189. 

Bosch,  J.  van  den,  246  ff.,  318,  321. 

Bouiv,  1.7  acres,  282. 

British  India,  2,  338,  373,  431. 

Bus  de  Ghisignies,  Du,  236. 

Camphuis,  J.,  99. 

Capellen,  Baron  van  den,  223ff.,233ff. 

Chinese,  183,  201,  360. 

Coen,  J.  P.,  46,  56,  90,  99. 

Coffee,  66,  118,  158,  214,  227  ff.,  263  ff., 

387,  394  ff. 
Colonization,  56. 
Commerce,   39,  61,  160,  190,  237,  278, 

353,  380. 
Comptabiliteitsivet,  383. 
Consignment  system,  278. 
Contingent,  63,  115,  143. 
Controleur,  419,  430. 
Council,  92,  145,  415. 
Credit  bondage,  348. 


Daendels,  H.  W.,  148  ff. 
Dam,  P.  van,  106. 
Dekker,  E.  D.,  301,  330,  382. 
Diemen,  Anthony  van,  90,  99. 
Dipa  Negara,  244. 
Director  General,  94,  151. 


District  heads,  220,  304,  420. 
Djokjokarta,   155,   171,  188,  196,  235, 
244,  376. 

Education,  121,  289,  389. 

Elout,  C.  P.  J.,  223. 

English  competition,  53,  76,  237  ff. 

Famine,  25,  315. 

Fl.,  florin,  see  Gulden. 

Forced  delivery,  63,  248. 

Governor  General,  42,  91,  145,  414. 
Gulden,  about  $.40,  62. 

Heerendiensten,  270. 
Hindu  period,  7. 
Hoevell,  W.  R.  van,  326. 
Hogendorp,  Dirk  van,  104,  134, 170. 
Hogendorp, G.  K.  van,  133. 

Imhoff,  Baron  van,  59. 
Indigo,  64,  264  ff.,  335. 

Janssens,  J.  W.,  162,  165. 
Judicial  organization,  153,  196. 

Kassian-stelsel,  431. 

Labor,  forced,   15,  31,  159,  198,  284, 

398  ff. 
Land,  leases,  231  ff.,  274,  371  ff. 
Land,  sales,  192,  367,  372. 
Land-tax,  173,  191,  206,  224,  248,  280, 

404. 
Land  tenure,  native,  28,  303,  366  ff. 


Madjapahit,  9. 
Mataram,  11,  196. 
Merkus,  Pieter,  202,  226,  283. 
Mexico,  labor  system,  350. 
Military  organization,  Dutch,  50,  80, 
107,  165. 
433 


434 


INDEX 


Military  organization,  native,  12,  50. 

Minto,  Lord,  167. 

Mohammedan  conquest,  9. 

Money,  J.  W.  B.,  251. 

Mossel,  Jacob,  59. 

Muntinghe,  H.  W.,  129  ff.,  199,  204  ff. 

Nederburgh,  S.  C,  141. 
Net-profit  system,  383. 

Officials,  see  also  Resident,  Coutroleur, 

Regent,  District  heads. 
Officials,  character,  96,  150,  216,  294, 

424. 
Officials,  salaries,  95, 146, 152,  293,  428. 
Officials,   training   and   appointment, 

97,  146,  216,  294,  428. 

Paul,  twenty  minutes'  walk,  271. 
Pangeran,  under-king,  11. 
Pantjen  services,  398,  400. 
Particular  lands,  259,  367. 
Particular  trade,  102. 
Pateh,  native  minister,  14. 
Penatoes,  native  officials,  283. 
Petinggi,  village  head,  29. 
Philippines,  337. 
Pikol,  133  pounds,  230. 
Piracy,  22. 


Poel,  Van  der,  306. 
Population,  2,  125,  312,  380. 
Portuguese  competition,  53. 
Preanger  Regencies,  189,  212,  234,  408. 
Putte,  F.  van  de,  334. 

Raffles,  T.  S.,  168,  231,  245. 
Regeerings  Reglement,  327. 
Regent,  110,  155,  196,  218,  297,  420. 
Resident,  112,  194,  218,  418. 
Roads,  24,  160,  271,  284. 
Rochussen,  J.  J.,  329. 

Sawah,  irrigated  rice  land,  34, 175. 
Soenan,  emperor  of  Mataram,  20. 
Soerakarta,  155,  188,  196,  235,  376. 
Staple,  42,  44,  60. 
Sugar,  69,  78, 261  £f.,  392  ff. 

Tagal,  dry  rice  land,  175. 
Taxes,  79,  402.     See  Land-tax. 
Thorbecke,  334. 
Trading  Company,  241,  277. 

Ustariz,  87. 

Village  government,  29,  220,  304,  421. 

Wilde,  De,  234. 


9 


0      12 


University  of  California  Library 
Los  Angeles 

This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 

1         oe  I  ■ 

-■■■  '-^    '  '  ^-  s 

310/        : 

\ 

'  '■'■        .  mo 

;                                 iCtr^Ag) 

''^W  J  8  2001 

» 

jUN  0  4  RECD      :00  AM 

4 
975 

179 

Form 

UHl 

'.g^n^ 


i 


3  1158  00487  7147        A? 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


AA    000  789  998    2 


